Growing up in Sydney, Saskia Newman fell in love with football at the age of four.
Now at just 22 years old, she's been named the vice-captain of the Australian women's
deaf football team.
When Saskia was just two years old, she received a cochlear implant in her left ear.
It was a newborn screening test that revealed she had moderately severe to profound congenital
sensorineural hearing loss.
Saskia spent her teenage years representing the Northern Tigers, but along the way she
was advocating for change, educating players and referees on what the cochlear implant
is and just how it helps her to play to the best of her abilities.
Despite obstacles faced along the way, nothing has stopped Saskia achieving her dreams on
and off the field.
This weekend, she will help lead the women's deaf football team as they play their first
international game outside of Australia in 20 years.
And it's made even more special as their game will be televised.
Saskia is also in her second year of her postgraduate medical degree at the Australian
National University.
My name is Sophie and I'm a producer here at the Female Athlete Project.
This week, Chloe caught up with Saskia as the Australian women's deaf football team
touched down in the US before their big match this weekend.
This is a heartwarming and insightful chat and we hope you enjoy it.
Saskia, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.
Can you tell us about Saskia as a little kid?
What were you like and how did you find a love for sport and for football?
I started playing soccer when I was four years old.
I was following in my footsteps of my older brother who was trialling for Linfield Football
Club and my dad had been coaching the two of us and teaching us how to play and just
learn ball sport.
I started playing sports growing up and I just ended up loving it and wanted to give
everything a shot.
I started playing in the midfield from a young age and from there, really enjoyed the game
and I enjoyed all sports at a young age.
I really enjoyed the freedom that sport gave me to excel and to be competitive in a field
where my hearing didn't affect me.
With soccer, I was able to play on the field and not have my hearing loss affect me.
It was a massive part of me growing up as a child, yeah.
And I had a lot of great coaches that supported me as a young athlete to play to the best
of my ability and were always able to help look out for me even though I had my hearing
loss, which meant that I couldn't always hear on the field.
And I ended up playing for Northern Tigers growing up.
There was a competition called North Harbour and they would scout girls at the time.
I don't know if it still goes on, but they would scout girls from this competition and
you would start playing in their skill development program, which is from where I started to
develop my skills and then play in the NPL league throughout high school.
And you're currently a part of the Australian Deaf Football Team.
When was your first exposure to that team?
So during COVID, one of the coaches reached out to me.
And asked if I was interested in playing.
They'd heard I had a hearing loss and was playing football as well.
There was a training camp being advertised in Canberra and I was really interested in
I've been a uni student at ANU.
So it was quite convenient for me to just pop in and see what it was all about.
So I went down and really enjoyed my first training camp with the team.
There was only two other girls at the time and it was majority boys training camp.
So to be included in that and to be welcomed.
It was an absolutely amazing experience.
I remember walking into the camp and going, I've never seen so many people with cochlear
implants or hearing aids and hearing loss in one space on a field together, having a great time.
And growing up and leading up until that point, had you faced many barriers in terms of being
able to access sport or access soccer?
I was able to participate in a lot of variety of different sports from para-athletics in
competing in my category as an athlete with hearing loss and also para-swimming where I was
competing as an athlete with hearing loss.
And it was a really inclusive space, which I really enjoyed meeting other young girls
and boys who also had different sorts of disabilities and being able to celebrate our
competitiveness and participation in sport together.
I did experience some barriers to participating in soccer and sport.
not being able to communicate with a coach on the sideline and receive instructions in the same way
that my hearing teammates would.
That could sometimes be a barrier to me improving in that moment during the game,
but I can always receive comments and feedback after the game or at halftime.
That was a way that we were able to work around those challenges for me.
Another time where I would have experienced a barrier was discrimination in terms of
having a hearing loss.
And I distinctly remember a game.
When I was 12 years old and the referee stopped the game at a free kick and asked me if I was
wearing jewellery on my ears and to take that off, to take off my cochlear implant and my
And I remember being really upset as a result of that comment that the referee made.
And as a result, we ended up speaking to the manager of the referees and implemented some
changes nationwide to the referees.
And that's how we ended up in the referee training program where referees were able to learn what
hearing loss was and what the cochlear implant looked like and hearing aids look like for young
athletes who may wear them on the field.
That's well, firstly, I'm really sorry that you went through that experience, but it's quite
powerful that you were able to enact nationwide change off the back of that.
Yeah, it was an absolutely amazing experience to be a part of, even though definitely a
challenging experience for me going through that.
The following games after that and in the following season, I would speak to the referee
and before the game and mention, yeah, I have a hearing loss.
This is what my cochlear implant is.
It's not a piece of jewellery.
And my manager was very supportive at the time.
So very thankful for the support I received then.
I think one of the other things that one of my family helped me with is when you play
sport with a cochlear implant, you often find that the cochlear implant is not the same
as the cochlear implant.
The cochlear implant dislodges from the head a little bit, so it loses the connection to
be able to hear, which is really important.
So the magnet comes off the head of the bone here.
And one of the simple solutions was wearing a headband.
Now, as an eight-year-old girl, no one else is wearing a headband and things have suddenly
changed since I was eight years old.
And now everybody often wears a headband or some sort of tape to keep, you know, the headband
your hair in place.
And at eight years old, I remember feeling really isolated by having to do that, even
though it was just a practical solution that was suggested by my dad.
And one of the things that I later found out, I didn't remember this at the time, was that
he spoke to all the parents of the team and each parent and team member went and got a
headband and we all started wearing them.
Oh, that's beautiful.
So we didn't get over the fear of being the only one wearing the headband.
So I think that's actually a very heartwarming story to share.
And yeah, very thankful to the teammates and parents who supported me at the time to make
that happen for me.
That's such a beautiful story.
And I'm even thinking like you mentioned now headbands are so popular, like you can't even
picture someone like Ellie Carpenter without a headband, right?
I'd love to quickly chat to you about the FIFA Women's World Cup.
I've been watching that with players like Ellie Carpenter, but we saw Mackenzie Arnold
actually was really a huge advocate and talked about the fact that she was wearing hearing
What does it feel like when you see someone like that being represented on a global stage?
Yeah, so Mackenzie Arnold was absolutely a topic of discussion amongst our Deaf Football
Australia Women's chat.
We were hoping maybe Mackenzie would like to play for us.
We said, Mackenzie.
And it was an absolutely amazing experience to see someone of her level of playing sport
at her level to be sharing her story of the challenges that she's faced and the different
experiences that she has.
Now, when we saw that article, it was an amazing experience.
We're all reading this article going, we didn't even know.
And it speaks to the fact that hearing loss is such a silent disability.
Often, you wouldn't know that someone has a hearing loss.
And you wouldn't know how you could help or what sort of accommodations that might
be appropriate to help support that athlete to perform to the best of their ability.
How does it feel now for you that you get to represent your country playing football?
It's absolutely a dream come true.
I think every girl growing up who plays soccer has probably had this dream of playing for
the Matildas or representing their country at the highest level for football.
And so, it's certainly a dream come true.
And I know my family is really proud of me and as are my friends.
So, I'm very thankful for the support I've received along the way.
Oh, it's so special.
I don't know if our Wi-Fi is a little bit dodgy.
So, I'm getting like glimpses of your face, but I can see your face like light up as you're
talking about it, which is really, really special.
Can you chat to us about what happened with the World Deaf Football Championships?
You were due as a team to travel to Malaysia last year to compete, but there was a bit
of a change last minute with some funding.
Can you give us a bit of a rundown?
So, the team was meant to compete at the World Deaf Football Championships in Kuala Lumpur
Unfortunately, we weren't able to go to Kuala Lumpur to compete due to the lack of funding,
which was pulled quite last minute, which meant that the team were really disappointed.
A lot of us had planned to go and were expecting.
We were expecting to need to plan leave and all of these sorts of things to make the trip
a reality and not being able to go on short notice due to a combination of a lack of funding
and lack of communication meant that the team weren't able to develop together and we missed
out on our crucial, potentially first opportunity to play the United States.
They won and became world champions, but we've got the opportunity to play them now this week.
I think the World Cup, it was sad to be missing the World Cup, which was a great opportunity
to develop as a team, but I know that the team's more prepared now than they were at
the time and we're more developed, we have more players and we're more ready to compete
on the international level now.
Yeah, you touched on the fact that you're there now.
So, you're in Denver.
I'm very thankful for your time because you've had a massive day of travel, cancelled flights,
you've had to go here, there and everywhere to actually play.
You've actually arrived at your destination, so I'm very thankful that you've made time
to chat to us, but talk to us about your game against the U.S. this weekend.
So, we spoke about it on our RAP podcast, so it's going to be 2 p.m. Saturday for you.
For us back home in Australia, it's going to be 6 a.m. Sunday morning and I'm going
to work with you to work out a link for people back home to be able to watch it, so hopefully
I'll include that in the show notes and in the social media, but chat to us about this
game against the U.S. team and it's going to be played before the U.S. Women's National
The girls are absolutely so excited to be competing against the U.S.A. team.
We're actually staying in the same hotel together at the moment and we haven't quite
met the U.S.A. team, but we know they're around and we're absolutely excited to have
our six training sessions in the lead up to a training game against the U.S., which will
be played on the Thursday.
Then we'll have some more training on Friday.
And then compete in our game against the U.S. on Saturday.
And the girls are very excited to come together as a team, learn how to communicate on the
field, learn our strengths and weaknesses and develop some tactical plays in order to
compete against the U.S.
We know the U.S. are an absolutely outstanding team on deaf football level.
They've won the World Championship.
They're undefeated for quite a number of games now.
Some players who play almost professionally or semi-professionally, who have a lot of
experience at an international level in terms of deaf competitions as well, with some players
having absolutely amazing statistics.
So I think for our team to get the opportunity to play against players who are playing at
that level is really special.
And I think the girls are all really looking forward to it and getting underway with training
in preparation for the game.
What does it mean to be a part of the U.S.A. team?
What does it look like from an accessibility perspective?
How do the rules and regulations of the game differ?
And how do you communicate as a team with players who have different levels of hearing
To comment first on the different levels of hearing loss that the team have, we have a
number of players who do use sign language or Auslan in Australia.
And we also have a number of players who don't use sign language and instead purely have
cochlear implants or hearing aids.
And some players are able to do a mix of both, which is amazing that they've learnt
both Auslan and how to use their hearing aids to the best of their ability.
Now, we have an interpreter as part of our team who's helping us to communicate within
the team, to communicate across different channels from Auslan to, I guess, spoken English
and then backwards spoken English to Auslan, translating for us and working across with
our coaches and our coaching staff.
So, a female coach who does also use Auslan.
And in terms of on the field, we use a lot of sign.
So, on the field, we use a lot of hand gestures to communicate, whether it's, say, it's like
a through ball or bounce pass through ball, always goes around.
There's a few ways that we can communicate using hand gestures.
Often, it might be using your hand to gesture where you want the ball or that you, signalling
that you want the ball at your feet.
Or at your chest.
And these are sorts of things that we're going to be working on in training over the coming
As for how the game differs.
So, it's actually the USA have written a very nice piece about this.
So, the game only differs for, the game of deaf football differs in two important ways.
One, the participants in the sport must have a hearing loss.
Makes a lot of sense.
So, the hearing loss requirement that the athletes must have is 55 decibels in their better ear.
So, what this might look like is maybe you have a total loss in your left ear.
So, for example, myself, I have a cochlear implant in my left ear, which means I cannot
hear out of my left ear without my cochlear implant when I'm not wearing it.
And then for my right ear, I have a hearing aid.
And my hearing loss sits at about 55 decibels in my right ear.
To contextualize this for the audience of hearing people, what 55 decibels looks like
is quite loud speech.
And there is a range of different sounds and consonants and vowels that fall across that
So, for someone with my level of hearing loss, you might miss certain words or miss certain
But if you do have a total hearing loss, you won't be able to hear any of those words in
spoken language at all.
So, that's the first important part of deaf football.
The second part is the referee uses a flag to communicate the changes in the game, whether
it's the ball's gone out, free kick, in addition to using the whistle.
So, these are the only two changes is the use of the whistle in conjunction with the
flag to see all the changes to the game.
And apart from that, the linesman.
The linesman still have their flag, so that doesn't change the game for the linesman's
But I think one of the other key changes, maybe not so much to the rules, but to that
nature of the game itself, is the field is a lot quieter.
You can't exactly call out to your teammates.
They won't hear the commands like turn or bounce pass.
That's not something that you can call out to your teammates in a game of deaf football.
And you also can't.
You won't hear the calls from the sideline.
You won't hear the coaches screaming out maybe as much or shouting out instructions as much
as maybe a regular hearing game of football, right?
And looking ahead to the weekend, thank you for that breakdown because it's so cool.
We talk a lot on our platform is that we always want to be educating people so that they can
understand sports that they might not have watched before or they might not have understood
So, thank you so much for sharing that with us.
Looking ahead to the weekend.
And then your current trip to the USA.
How did this one go ahead off the back of some funding issues last year?
What has now allowed you guys to get over there?
So, our time in the US today is partly being sponsored in by the US team itself.
So, we're very fortunate for the collaboration with the USA team to make this happen.
We've also had the chance to fundraise a bit more.
We've had more time to prepare for this competition.
In terms of organising funding, players have been able to fundraise themselves.
A number of players fundraised a significant amount, applied for different grants from
supporting organisations who have interest in hearing and also universities and local
So, the community and parents and the deaf community has really stepped up to support us
to go to the US this time and to compete against the world champions.
Unfortunately, we don't have access to government funding, which would make an absolute difference
to our ability to play and travel internationally.
But I would say that the difference between us not being able to go last time and being
able to travel this year is the effort from the team and the community support has been
absolutely phenomenal.
We're very grateful that a lot of our players have received financial support to attend
I'm wishing you the very best of luck on the weekend, Saskia.
I'm so excited to make sure we find that link so we can watch you guys and support you.
Thank you so much for your time today and I hope the jet lag isn't too bad and that
you managed to get a little bit of sleep tonight.
Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, Chloe.
It's been an absolute honour to share my story with you.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you got something out of this episode, I would absolutely love it if you could send
it on to one person who you think might enjoy it.
Thanks so much for listening.
If you got something out of this episode, I would absolutely love it if you could send it on to one person who you think might enjoy it.
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