Babineaux Sees His Dream Being Realized

Babineaux sees his dream being realized Hope Rurik / The Daily Iberian Babineaux sees his dream being realized Trainer Josh Sonnier, left, watches Baron Babineaux Jr., who is deaf and blind, work out at Baron’s. Posted: Sunday, July 10, 2011 6:00 am | Updated: 10:14 pm, Sat Jul 9, 2011. BY HOPE RURIK, THE DAILY IBERIAN | 0 comments Baron Babineaux Jr. has spent eight months pursuing competitive bodybuilding, a sport that relies on listening to instructions and seeing the results of gym hours, without having the ability to do either. At age 12, Babineaux was diagnosed with Usher’s syndrome, which means he is deaf and legally blind. Sliding his hands over and around gym equipment, Babineaux chooses a machine, straddles the seat and starts his workout in preparation for his first competition. Trainer Josh Sonnier stands behind him and taps on his shoulder indicating when to start and when to stop. “He’s a 32-year-old man,” said Sonnier. “He’s no different than me. We talk about the same things.” By “talk,” Sonnier is referring to the system of tactile gestures the two have worked out to communicate. Although Babineaux has taught Sonnier some signs, most of their code is a series the two worked out on their own. Babineaux’s mother, Karen, and father, Baron, learned when their son was 10 months old that he had profound hearing loss — the most severe form of hearing loss. When the Babineauxs turned to the Louisiana School for the Deaf for a sign language instructor, they found out about a different method introduced in the U.S. by Doreen Pollack called acoupedics, which uses no signs and essentially teaches deaf children to read lips. For the first 10 years of his life, said Karen Babineaux, the family did not sign as a means of communication. Then he started losing his sight, leading to the Usher’s diagnosis. After years of playing baseball, Babineaux had to walk away from his pitcher’s mound at age 13 because he could no longer see the ball. “When he was diagnosed, he had 20/40,” said Karen Babineaux, “and the prognosis was that he would probably hold on to that until he was 50 or 60, but he did not.” In high school, Babineaux got his driver’s license and went through spring training for New Iberia High School football. However, his mother said he decided football wasn’t for him and ultimately didn’t drive much, either. “A lot of it he kept to himself,” she said. “Like when he stopped driving, I knew it was for a reason.” Babineaux’s vision declined most, said his mother, during his 20s following a vitrectomy — a common procedure which cleans accumulated material from the back of the retina. “As with any surgery, you have three options: It gets better, it gets worse or it stays the same,” she said. “And it got worse.” Using a deaf/blind communicator that uses a cell phone on one end and a strip that translates text messages into braille using prongs that rise and fall, Babineaux said having his vision deteriorate rapidly had a tremendous impact. The then 21-year-old developed obsessive compulsive disorder and had to return home to New Iberia after two years at a community college in Mississippi. Although he had started to study bodybuilding and train, he stopped when his vision got worse. “I wanted to get serious,” he said. “But my vision diminished so I backed off for awhile, knowing it was a goal.” Babineaux returned to college, attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. During that time, Sonnier began working at Baron’s Health and Court Club, which is owned by the Babineaux family. That, said Babineaux, made a significant difference in his road to bodybuilding, and once he graduated from the university in December 2010 with a general studies degree, he and Sonnier started to train. Sonnier and the elder Babineauxs said it was important to Babineaux that he compete in an open competition, not a competition geared toward the disabled. Babineaux’s concern as he trained for the competition has been his size at 6 feet tall and 175 pounds, but Sonnier said the judges will look for definition, leanness and proportion. Those qualities, said Sonnier, are some of Babineaux’s strongpoints. Babineaux’s drive toward his goal opened Sonnier’s eyes, said the trainer, and inspired his tattoo, “Never take it for granted.” In a sense, said Sonnier, he came to share Babineaux’s dream as his own, leading right to Saturday’s National Physique Committee competition at the Heymann Performing Arts Center in Lafayette. “My goal was to have his dream come true,” he said.

 

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