WATCHING Jodie Ounsley squaring up to competitors as Fury on Gladiators, it's hard to believe she's ever been anything but strong and confident.
And at the age of 24, Jodie already has a remarkable rugby career under her belt. The first deaf female rugby player to have appeared for a senior England side, she represented England and Great Britain at rugby sevens.
She has won Deaf Sports Personality of the Year, served as honorary president of UK Deaf Sport, and visits schools talking to children about her story.
But behind the scenes, Jodie, from Thornhill, Yorkshire, has overcome shyness and self-doubt, almost walking away from the game when difficulties with communication became too much.
She's now sharing the lessons she's learned in a new children's book, Keep Smashing It.
Born seven weeks premature and diagnosed with profound hearing loss, Jodie's parents Phil, 55, and Jo, 53, were told their daughter probably wouldn't speak, and would find it hard to get an education or a job when she grew up.
It was her parents’ quick action, Jodie said, that set her on the path to success.
‘They didn't know any deaf people at the time. They went into this mindset of, ‘well, what can we do?
Phil and Jo took Jodie to sessions at the Elizabeth Foundation, an organisation supporting deaf children, when she was three months, focusing on body language, eye contact and the start of lip-reading.
At 14 months, she was one of the youngest people in the UK to get a cochlear implant, a device which uses a sound processor to send signals to the ear that the brain can interpret as sound.
"It’s not a quick fix," said Jodie. "It’s a lot of work. My mum gave up her job and spent all day taking me to speech therapy then back home for practice, having that constant time with me."
The hard work paid off. Jodie was able to join mainstream primary school and began to dream of sporting glory, finding that PE lessons were the one time she could forget about being deaf.
After watching Usain Bolt in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Jodie became "obsessed" with the Olympics and set her heart on competing herself.
"I was so competitive at school," she laughed. "I was always racing against the boys. Sports Day was the Olympics to me. Other kids turned up in PE kit and I had the audacity to turn up in a muscle vest and shorts. I was like, this means business."
At primary school, she said, "I remember thinking the implant was a cool thing. I didn’t understand how it worked - I thought they'd cut my ear off and put a robot ear on!"
But as Jodie moved into middle and high school, something shifted. "I wanted to fit in," she said. She'd hide her implant under her hair and, when she couldn't hear, felt too shy to let teachers know.
In addition to difficulty following lessons, she was suffering with hearing fatigue. "With the implant, I can pick up certain sounds - I've been told it sounds robotic. But most of the time it's just filling in the gaps - a lot of guesswork, lip-reading and body language.
"I didn't know about hearing fatigue, I just got migraines a lot. We got it checked out and I was given a pair of glasses, which didn't do anything."
Jodie started taking part in sprint races aged nine, won gold at the British Open Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championships aged 11 then, at 15, watched her brother Jack playing rugby. She was desperate to get involved.
With rugby sevens included in the 2016 Olympics, Jodie felt she'd found her path and set her heart on selection for the England sevens in 2020. The potential risk, however, was huge. Doctors advise against playing contact sports when fitted with a cochlear implant as once damaged, there is a chance that repair won't be possible and hearing will be lost.
But Jodie was determined. Working with specialists and with her parents’ support, they came up with a solution - wearing a scrum cap with extra padding to protect the implant.
Her dreams were on track until, aged 16, living away at Loughborough College to study and play rugby, Jodie began to doubt herself.
As well as finding communication challenging in the classroom, it was difficult on the rugby field too, and she still lacked the confidence to say anything.
After suffering a shoulder injury and missing six months of rugby, she started to fee...
And at the age of 24, Jodie already has a remarkable rugby career under her belt. The first deaf female rugby player to have appeared for a senior England side, she represented England and Great Britain at rugby sevens.
She has won Deaf Sports Personality of the Year, served as honorary president of UK Deaf Sport, and visits schools talking to children about her story.
But behind the scenes, Jodie, from Thornhill, Yorkshire, has overcome shyness and self-doubt, almost walking away from the game when difficulties with communication became too much.
She's now sharing the lessons she's learned in a new children's book, Keep Smashing It.
Born seven weeks premature and diagnosed with profound hearing loss, Jodie's parents Phil, 55, and Jo, 53, were told their daughter probably wouldn't speak, and would find it hard to get an education or a job when she grew up.
It was her parents’ quick action, Jodie said, that set her on the path to success.
‘They didn't know any deaf people at the time. They went into this mindset of, ‘well, what can we do?
Phil and Jo took Jodie to sessions at the Elizabeth Foundation, an organisation supporting deaf children, when she was three months, focusing on body language, eye contact and the start of lip-reading.
At 14 months, she was one of the youngest people in the UK to get a cochlear implant, a device which uses a sound processor to send signals to the ear that the brain can interpret as sound.
"It’s not a quick fix," said Jodie. "It’s a lot of work. My mum gave up her job and spent all day taking me to speech therapy then back home for practice, having that constant time with me."
The hard work paid off. Jodie was able to join mainstream primary school and began to dream of sporting glory, finding that PE lessons were the one time she could forget about being deaf.
After watching Usain Bolt in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Jodie became "obsessed" with the Olympics and set her heart on competing herself.
"I was so competitive at school," she laughed. "I was always racing against the boys. Sports Day was the Olympics to me. Other kids turned up in PE kit and I had the audacity to turn up in a muscle vest and shorts. I was like, this means business."
At primary school, she said, "I remember thinking the implant was a cool thing. I didn’t understand how it worked - I thought they'd cut my ear off and put a robot ear on!"
But as Jodie moved into middle and high school, something shifted. "I wanted to fit in," she said. She'd hide her implant under her hair and, when she couldn't hear, felt too shy to let teachers know.
In addition to difficulty following lessons, she was suffering with hearing fatigue. "With the implant, I can pick up certain sounds - I've been told it sounds robotic. But most of the time it's just filling in the gaps - a lot of guesswork, lip-reading and body language.
"I didn't know about hearing fatigue, I just got migraines a lot. We got it checked out and I was given a pair of glasses, which didn't do anything."
Jodie started taking part in sprint races aged nine, won gold at the British Open Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Championships aged 11 then, at 15, watched her brother Jack playing rugby. She was desperate to get involved.
With rugby sevens included in the 2016 Olympics, Jodie felt she'd found her path and set her heart on selection for the England sevens in 2020. The potential risk, however, was huge. Doctors advise against playing contact sports when fitted with a cochlear implant as once damaged, there is a chance that repair won't be possible and hearing will be lost.
But Jodie was determined. Working with specialists and with her parents’ support, they came up with a solution - wearing a scrum cap with extra padding to protect the implant.
Her dreams were on track until, aged 16, living away at Loughborough College to study and play rugby, Jodie began to doubt herself.
As well as finding communication challenging in the classroom, it was difficult on the rugby field too, and she still lacked the confidence to say anything.
After suffering a shoulder injury and missing six months of rugby, she started to fee...
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Daily Record (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 18, 2025