Soccer inspiring hearing-impaired to succeed

The club now has about 80 players of both sexes aged between 15 and 35, who are hearing impaired. They are not professionals. Many team members have jobs, working at fast food restaurants or on factory assembly lines, while others attend school. But they all come together at night to train.

Longren is the first officially registered disabled soccer club in the country and has been dubbed the "Barcelona Club of Chinese deaf soccer". It has had some success. The women's team won third place at the 4th AP Deaf Futsal Championships in Iran between April 29 and May 10.

The campus team from which the club was born grew out of a soccer fever that spread throughout the school when the Chinese men's soccer team qualified for the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

It was the first time China qualified to take part in the event, and many students followed the matches, and developed an interest in playing the sport as a result. Their enthusiasm led Zheng, who was teaching at the school at the time, to set up a soccer team, which was approved by the school in 2003.

To train players properly, he purchased 100 books and many CDs to learn more about the game.

"Soccer has made the hearing-impaired players on the team more confident and optimistic," he said, adding that it is more than just a game, it's a tool that can help change people for the better.

For example, Chen Zhenhua, who was born in 1988, was a temperamental student before he joined the team, and was known for often getting into fights.

His irritable nature earned him the nickname of "Beast".