TLN: Northwest coach learned to play, lead while dealing with hearing loss
When playing quarterback at either McKinney High School or Hardin-Simmons, Bill Poe went through plenty of stressful moments.
As tight games came down to the closing moments, the noise from the crowd grew to extraordinary levels. The noise from the sideline nearly matched it.
Yet through it all, Poe could tune it out. That’s because he couldn’t help but tune it out. Poe is suffering from 75 percent hearing loss.
Northwest’s second-year head coach has been dealing with severe to profound deafness since he was about 18 months old. To this day it still isn’t clear if the deafness was a result of high fevers he suffered at that age.
Really, it doesn’t matter anymore. The 38-year-old Poe didn’t let the setback impact his life. It also didn’t prevent Northwest ISD athletic director Susan Elza, who recently accepted the athletic director position at the UIL, from hiring him. Poe has been a football coach for 17 years and is now is in his second head coaching stint. He was at Longview Spring Hill from 2010-2011. He went to Marble Falls as its offensive coordinator in 2012-2013 before coming to Northwest.
“Each place I’ve coached at in the last several years, I’ve been in a leadership role and I’ve used my situation as a motivation factor for my players,” Poe said. “You’re always going to deal with adversity. I just tell my players this is one of the things I have had to overcome. Really, it comes down to having a good approach and a good attitude.”
Dealing with his hearing loss started early for Poe with the use of hearing aids – he has converted from using the old aids (with the tube over the ears) to the aids that fit inside the ear and are not visible – but also being able to read lips.
It has been clinically proven that when one sense is impaired or lost, others are strengthened. Poe’s mother Betty, also an educator, helped put her son in several environments that would help him deal with his challenge.
One of those increased senses is his power of observation, so he could read lips. He could lock into what other people were saying and know what was being said and being able to carry on a conversation. Of course, it took some time for him to master this. But he said he can figure out what’s being said 90 percent of the time.
“I just learned to do it,” Poe said. “I definitely can tell what is being said. And even if there is something I’m missing, I can put the pieces together.”
So when it came to playing football, his father Ron, made the adjustment for his unique quarterback. Instead of the traditional format of having players come in from the sideline to relay the play, the McKinney coaching staff started using a series of signals in 1993-1994. Hardin-Simmons coaching staff did the same thing in 1997-1998.
“The helmet wasn’t conducive to wearing the hearing aids, so I had to take them out,” Poe said. “But I watched a lot of body language. I never really could hear a whistle to stop a play. But I could tell when it was over.”
As he has transitioned into coaching and dealing with everything on the sidelines, Poe acknowledges he can’t hear everything. However, Poe is very aware of his surroundings.
He also understands offense. The Texan offense was proof of that in 2014 as it scored 30 or more points eight times.
Time has transitioned to where Poe meets with an audiologist annually. Otherwise, most people wouldn’t know of Poe’s impairment unless he told them.
“I don’t know if people were apprehensive before or not,” Poe said. “But for the most part this has been my life. It’s always my challenge. But I don’t let impact anything I do.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2015 at 11:47 AM with the headline "TLN: Northwest coach learned to play, lead while dealing with hearing loss."