Hearing loss didn't stop Western Christian's Ty Van Essen from being a top multi-sport athlete

It’s March 2021, and Western Christian boys basketball is at the Wells Fargo Arena for the first of what would be three games en route to a state title.

The Wolfpack are matched up against Camanche first, and then-junior Ty Van Essen is ready to go. He’s warmed up with his team, he has the white Nike headband he wears for every basketball game on.

Things are going well for Van Essen, who by the end of the night would score 18 points and add six rebounds and three assists. But at one point in all the action, something does go wrong.

One of Van Essen’s two hearing aids — the one in his left ear — fell out. There wasn’t time to put it back in, so he picked it up and left it on the scorer’s table. Then he went back into game mode.

“It was a different experience for me, because it never happened before,” Van Essen said. “I could barely hear the sounds of the crowd and my teammates talking, so I had to be extra alert.”

Van Essen’s parents noticed, and so did the broadcast team. On the televised feed — which his family has a video of — you can hear the announcer trying to make sense of what he saw.

“On his right ear, he has hearing implants around each ear,” the television announcer said. “He is, he’s deaf.”

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Van Essen has never known different

Van Essen doesn’t have implants and he isn’t actually deaf, at least not fully.

On July 13, 2004 — five months to the day after Van Essen was born — he was taken to the hospital with what his family thought was just a worsening cold.

It turned out to be spinal meningitis.

The hospital started to prepare for the five-month-old to be transported to a larger hospital via ambulance, but then Van Essen started having seizures. He was airlifted from Sheldon to the Sanford Medical Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and given antibiotics to stop the seizures.

Van Essen spent eight days in the NICU there before spending another six days back in the Sheldon hospital.

What no one knew, at the time, was that the medicine had a possible side effect that had impacted Van Essen.

Hearing loss.

“There were things, like the dogs were barking and he didn’t turn to look at them,” Jill Van Essen, Ty’s mother, said. “Something would fall on the floor and he didn’t have any reaction. It was probably over a year before we actually got him tested.”

At 18 months old, Van Essen got his first hearing aid for his left ear. About six months later, he got the hearing aid for his right ear.

Van Essen’s left ear is his “good” ear. He can hear at around 70% in that ear, while he can only hear about 30% in his right ear, without hearing aids. With his aids set to accommodate each ear, he can hear about 95% with his left and 70% with his right, according to Jill Van Essen, although Ty says he has full hearing with his aids in.

Hindsight is 20/20, but even if Van Essen’s parents knew that the anti-seizure medicine could cause hearing loss, they still would’ve been OK with him taking it.

“Probably,” Jill and Ty’s father, Dave, said almost in unison.

“Because, otherwise, he wouldn’t be here,” Jill added.

Sure, growing up and playing sports with hearing aids has come with its own set of challenges.

But Van Essen has never known anything else.

His family — extended relatives included — learned basic American Sign Language before he was fitted for hearing aids. Over time, Van Essen taught himself to read lips to help him fully understand what people are saying. In a small, tighter-knit community, he always had someone looking out for him.

Sometimes that meant his classmates made sure he heard a question. Other times it was his older brother, Zach, who helped teach coaches and teammates how best to get his attention.

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Growing into a four-sport star in Western Iowa

Van Essen doesn’t exactly have an offseason.

In his senior year, he was the starting quarterback on Western Christian’s football team. When fall sports wrapped up, Van Essen jumped right into basketball. Spring sports started, and Van Essen took to the pitch as the Wolfpack’s starting goalkeeper.

And, while he technically graduated with his classmates in May, Van Essen squeezed in one more season of high school baseball before heading off to college.

Being a multi-sport high school athlete isn’t a rarity in Iowa.

Excelling in four sports despite hearing loss in both ears, now that’s something new.

But that’s exactly what Van Essen has done.

On the football field, he threw for 1,774 yards and 16 touchdowns this season. Before taking over as starting quarterback, Van Essen was Western Christian’s top receiver in his junior season, picking up 374 yards and five touchdowns on 26 receptions.

In soccer, Van Essen allowed just eight goals in 1,159 minutes played, recording an 86.9 save percentage. He helped Western Christian to its second straight Class 1A state championship game, but the Wolfpack lost to Davenport Assumption, 2-1, in penalty kicks.

Western Christian has struggled in baseball this season — posting a 4-12 record through Thursday — but Van Essen has been the Wolfpack’s bright spot. In 36 at-bats, he’s recorded a .333 batting average and .500 slugging percentage. Van Essen is the Wolfpack’s ace on the mound, with a 1.73 ERA, 27 strikeouts and holding opponents to a .193 batting average in 24.1 innings pitched.

Even with relative success in each of those three sports, none of those are even Van Essen’s best athletic endeavor.

The basketball court is where Van Essen shines the most.

Last season, he led Western Christian to a Class 2A state championship over Boyden-Hull. Van Essen scored 32 points and added 12 rebounds to give the Wolfpack their tenth state title in program history, and first since 2017. He was named the 2A All-Tournament team captain.

Western Christian didn’t make it to the state tournament this year. But Van Essen was the best player on the court again, averaging 18.9 points, 8 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game and leading the Wolfpack to a 21-2 overall record.

He scored his 1,000th career point against Unity Christian on January 13, 2022.

And his basketball career isn’t over, with Van Essen set to join the Dordt men’s basketball program when his high school baseball season ends.

Sports still aren’t without challenges

When Van Essen takes to the baseball field behind Western Christian high school for practice on June 16, he and his teammates are fresh off a 4-2 loss to Cherokee Washington the night before.

It was a game in which Van Essen’s hearing loss didn’t impact his play but did impact the coaching staff.

Van Essen was on third base, closest to the Wolfpack dugout. Head coach Trent Roose tried to get his attention.

“I kept yelling ‘Ty’ and I couldn’t get his attention,” Roose said. “In fact, Zach (Van Essen) just yelled out really loud and got his attention. Really, it hasn’t been a problem. We’re all used to it.”

That’s the biggest challenge for Van Essen: hearing coaches and teammates who aren’t talking in front of him. But that hasn’t made the transition to sports difficult, especially because Van Essen had his brother, Zach, with him in most high school sports for a couple years.

“He’s always had someone looking out for him that way, whether it’s his older brother or his friends,” Dave Van Essen said. “Zach, he’s always very much looked out for Ty.”

“Ty, right away would always look to Zach on the sideline,” Jill Van Essen continued. “Instead of looking at the coaches, he would look at Zach. And Zach would always be like, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ Once Zach graduated, it was a little bit of an adjustment for Ty to figure out how to do that on his own.”

It wasn’t difficult for Van Essen to adjust; he had spent much more of his life with hearing loss than without.

“He’s always had it,” said Derek Keizer, Western Christian head boys basketball coach. “So, he’s just played basketball and that’s kind of all he knows.”

But that wasn’t the case for his coaches.

Keizer remembers thinking in his first year coaching the Wolfpack that if he just yelled really loud, Van Essen would hear him. That’s not the case.

Even on the football field, where head coach Travis Kooima says his team already used hand signals to call plays, there were some difficulties.

“Practice was probably the biggest thing, when you’re doing drills and I wanted to holler at him about how he should’ve done something,” Kooima said. “And I’m standing behind him when he’s doing those drills and he wouldn’t even look at me.

“As a coach, you have to remember to not get frustrated. He’s not tuning you out. He’s not ignoring you. He just didn’t hear you, so you have a quick tap on the shoulder, or you turn to make sure you have eyes on each other.”

And those are just some of the challenges.

Keizer said there have been times when Van Essen’s hearing aid battery runs out, and he literally can’t hear.

His hearing aid did come out during that state tournament basketball game.

Van Essen has to wear a headband while playing basketball and under his helmet for football to keep the sweat off his hearing aids.

But he’s also never used any of those challenges as an excuse.

“Ty, he’s a quiet leader, he leads through example,” Keizer said. “Ty’s very capable of getting 30 points and 10 rebounds a game, but he chooses to do what’s best for the team in each game. What’s cool about him is he understands we needed that against Boyden-Hull and, obviously, was very capable of it.”

What comes next for Van Essen?

When baseball season ends, it will not mark the last time Van Essen plays sports competitively. He’s committed to play basketball at Dordt University, continuing a bit of a family legacy at the school.

Van Essen’s grandparents went there. Both Dave and Jill Van Essen played basketball for the Defenders. His older brother is a current Dordt student.

“It’ll be fun to watch him have a lot of the same experiences that we both did playing basketball,” Dave said. “We’re thankful he’s going to Dordt in general, because we think it’s a great school and it’s close, so we can watch him play.”

At Dordt, he’ll be rooming with a friend, which means Van Essen will still have one of those people looking out for him – like always.

He’s overcome every challenge put in front of him, and college is just the next obstacle in line. But even after having worked through so much in just 18 years, Van Essen wouldn’t change a thing.

“I do think about it sometimes, wishing that I never lost my hearing, wishing that all my problems would just go away. But now as I’m getting older, I know that this happened for a reason, that God had a plan for me.”

Alyssa Hertel is a college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How hearing-impaired Western Christian athlete Ty Van Essen excels