Emma Neff’s road to Cedarville; from Malaysia to Ohio

By Maggie Fipps

Sports are obnoxiously loud. Shoes squeaking on the hardwood, referees blowing their whistles and fans screaming at said referees.

For Emma Neff, a junior guard for Cedarville’s women’s basketball team, all those sounds were muted, like watching the basketball game with the volume turned down. 

“I don’t think I knew I couldn’t hear that well, I just didn’t hear the things, if that makes sense,” Neff said. “So like the birds, I just didn’t hear it.”

Neff and her parents noticed her constant refrain of “what” was not simply a childlike question but a sign of something deeper. She got her first cochlear implant in fourth grade, and everything changed. 

“It’s just a huge difference because you take it off and you’re deaf and then you put it on, you can hear everything,” Neff said. 

25 miles west of Cedarville lies Oakwood, Ohio, where Neff grew up. The youngest of five and the daughter of two athletes, in her city of 9,000, the Neffs are known as the sports family.

“It just was how we rolled,” Neff said. 

Starting in kindergarten, Neff was always a double threat, excelling in soccer and basketball.  She was spurred on by one-on-one matchups with her siblings, especially Andy, a 6’7” forward who played for years at Wright State. Did she ever beat him?

“I hope I did, but probably not because my brothers are all so tall, so maybe just don’t quote me,” Neff said with a laugh.

The Neff siblings clustered around Oakwood; none of them moved farther than thirty minutes away, taking their athletic prowess to schools in the area. One played at Cedarville, one at Wright State, one at the University of Dayton, and then it was Emma’s turn. Her decision did not just come down to which school, but which sport. 

“I was just putting so much more time into basketball,” Neff said. “In my days, I was going to go shoot a basketball, I wasn’t kicking a soccer ball.”

As Neff finished her final season of soccer at Oakwood, she began to contemplate life without soccer, a reality she did not enjoy. 

“After my high school season, I was like, ‘I can’t believe soccer is coming to an end, I just want to keep playing it,’” Neff said. 

That was when Neff’s mom came across an Instagram post from the US Women’s National Deaf team. The team is part of US Soccer’s Extended National Team program, and they compete in the DIFA World Deaf Football Championships against other deaf teams. Since the team began play in 2005, they dominated the national stage: their 37-0-1 record proves it. Little did she know that Neff’s travel team coach had planted the seed a year earlier.

But in that moment, Neff said she dismissed it quickly.

“I think I was totally insecure about it,” Neff said. “I didn’t really know any other deaf people, and I didn’t really classify myself as deaf because I can hear, so I kind of brushed it off. I remember he gave me my phone to look at the website and I grabbed the phone, scrolled through a couple of times, and handed it back to him.”

But now, with the prospect of life without soccer staring at her, Neff could not pass up the opportunity. She traveled to Illinois and joined the team for a week of camp, not knowing that she was auditioning for an international opportunity: to play in the World Deaf Footbal Championship in Malaysia.

“I just thought I was trying out and they’ll tell me if I go to the next camp,” Neff said. “Then some of the girls on the team told me that, like mid-camp, I was like, ‘Wait, what?’”

That soccer camp was the first time that Neff was surrounded by the deaf community. The whole team leveled the playing field by playing without their hearing aids or cochlears, something Neff said she had not done since high school. 

“Seeing 11 other people on the field with you also being deaf was very weird at first, but that’s just what we are used to,” Neff said. “There’s no talking on the field, you just point to each other.”

The team featured athletes from Utah to Georgia; traveling to Malaysia quickly made them feel like family.

“We all relate to each other, and we’re all really inclusive,” Neff said. “You get to relate a lot to what challenges you face, and just learning their day-to-day life.”

The team came away from Malaysia victorious: defeating Turkey 3-0 to secure its third world championship. Returning 9,446 miles home to her freshman season at Otterbein University, circumstances were less encouraging. 

“I was choosing a school based off basketball,” Neff said. “I learned that basketball doesn’t define me. I need to know more about: ‘What do I want as a life out of this?’”

Neff said Cedarville was originally her first choice, but it quickly got knocked off when Coach Jason Smith resigned in 2023. With her options narrowing, she selected Otterbein and barely had time to settle into her dorm before leaving for Malaysia. 

“I remember when I was leaving to go to Malaysia, I knew I wasn’t going to miss the place,” Neff said. “It was just sad, I knew I was like looking forward to nothing more than September 15th because I got to leave.”

Returning jetlagged and exhausted, Neff returned right in the swing of basketball conditioning and quickly realized something was not right. 

“After that day, I fell apart,” Neff said. “I wasn’t eating because I was too busy trying to get caught up on school, and then basketball was another thing. I’m not an emotional person by any means, but I was crying every 15 minutes.”

Oakwood was always a solace for Neff, but now returning home was an escape. 

“My weekends were laying on the couch,” Neff said. “My mom would ask me if I wanted to do things I said, ‘No, time would go by too fast if we do things.’” 

Ultimately, her family, who cheered her on at every game from Oakwood to Malaysia,  came to the rescue in the lowest moment. 

“My mom said ‘I’ll support whatever decision you make, whether you stay or you leave, but I can’t watch you be miserable anymore,’” Neff said. 

Neff left Otterbein after three months and spent the rest of the fall semester in Oakwood, where her older siblings stepped in. 

“I think the only thing holding me back was the people,” Neff said. “ I was so fearful about what people would think about me leaving school. I would literally text all my siblings and be like ‘Do you think so and so would be mad?’ They were just constantly reminding me, like, ‘Emma, it doesn’t matter, we’re here we support you. It matters what God thinks of you.”

Neff said her thoughts quickly returned to the next semester. Would her basketball dreams be done forever? Through a friend’s mom, she reached out to Cedarville again, whose women’s team had suffered several key injuries. 

“I reached out and the coach, and then they asked me to be a practice player,” Neff said. “I took a yes because I was like, ‘What would I think of myself like a year later if I said no?’”

Just like the rest of her life, Neff had to push herself to pursue her dream. None of her credits transferred to Cedarville, so to gain athletic eligibility, she took 18 and a half credits in the spring and six over the summer, all while practicing with the team. This season, she is looking forward to the fruits of that hard work. 

“Eight new girls came in and there’s so much excitement just between the whole team,” Neff said. “Chemistry is already super high and we’re very talented, but it’s not talent that will always win games, it’s about the chemistry between the team.”

Neff still plays with the national deaf team every once in a while, but she now spends more time with her first love, basketball. She would love to return to Oakwood to coach basketball, but for now, she looks ahead to the coming season where she finally feels at home with herself and her team. 

Maggie Fipps is a senior Journalism student and the Editor in Chief of Cedars. She enjoys playing the piano and thrifting, and you may spot her around campus sporting Packers gear head to toe.

 Photos provided by Emma Neff