LSD football coach Denton Mallas overcame deafness to lead young athletes
BATON ROUGE, La. (BVM) – The old adage “actions speak louder than words,” is especially true in the case of Denton Mallas.
As the head coach at Louisiana School of the Deaf (LSD), his journey has been different compared to others.
Since fifth grade, Mallas has had the passion to seek a life in sports despite being deaf. He started playing flag football and moved up to tackle football in seventh grade with a South Milwaukee middle school team. His father helped spark the passion that Mallas now has today.
“I got my love of sports from my father who coached me for most of my childhood life until high school,” Mallas wrote to us. “He ensured that I would have communication access to every sport possible for me to participate in.”
When he reached high school, Mallas’ passion for football would grow substantially. He attended Wisconsin School for the Deaf (WSD). There, he had opportunities some other high school athletes may not have ever experienced.
“My passion began to grow in high school because I had the unique experience of traveling to other states to play other schools for the deaf and meet other peers,” Mallas said. “It’s similar to ‘Harry Potter’ where Hogwarts gets to meet with other wizarding schools and compete among them. WSD was a pretty small school with around 40-50 high school students, so we played eight-man football.”
Mallas became aware of WSD because of coach Mark Alekinski. Coach Alekinski would unfortunately pass away after Denton’s freshman season.
“It was shocking and unexpected because I wanted to continue to play under him for three more years,” Mallas said. “He always emphasized priorities by saying this quote: ‘School first. Football second. Girlfriend Last!’,”
Mallas still echoes the same sentiment to his players today in memory of coach Alekinski.
He would finish his high school career playing for coach Steven Fuerst. Fuerst would prove to be another pivotal role model for Mallas.
“Coach Fuerst taught me so much more about life, but also taking pride in being deaf,” Mallas said. “He would take every teaching moment to talk about life lessons and how we can represent ourselves as a deaf person and also the deaf community.”
In his senior season, WSD would make it to the 2008 eight-man deaf football national championship.
After playing eight-man football in high school, Mallas made the jump to the collegiate level. He attended Gallaudet University to play for the only all-deaf college football team in the country.
Mallas had multiple roles while competing on the gridiron. He was positioned as a defensive back, but a majority of his contributions for the Bison came from the special teams side of the ball. Gallaudet is a one-of-a-kind place and for Mallas, it would be an important step in becoming a head coach.
Mallas’ passion for football helped him earn a graduate assistant coaching position with the Bison football team after his playing career was over.
“I was very grateful to my college coaches for the wonderful opportunity to start my coaching career at Gallaudet University,” Mallas said. “The graduate assistant experience made me fall in love with football even more.”
By 2016, Mallas had become an assistant coach for LSD football under Susan Gremillion. That year, LSD won the eight-man football national championship. In 2017, Gremillion stepped down and Mallas took over.
As LSD continues to play eight-man football and strive for that championship success, most deaf schools are unfortunately seeing their athletic teams fade. But Mallas hopes that teams like his can bring in more deaf students to these schools and keep the deaf community strong.
“That close-knit community among the deaf schools is one of the reasons why I pursued a career in coaching,” Mallas said. “That is even more important now as deaf football programs and athletic programs have started to dwindle down and as a community, we are trying our best to use athletics to bring in more students for our deaf schools.”
