What a cool bloke! Lukas Kaut, who is in his second year of his carpentry apprenticeship with us, played for the German national deaf handball team at the Deaflympics in Tokyo – and won the silver medal.
But let’s start at the beginning: Lukas is deaf. At least, he is when he isn’t wearing his cochlear implants. “When I was three, my hearing started to get worse and worse; I was given hearing aids, and then at some point I lost my hearing completely,” recalls the 20-year-old. Today, the implants enable him to lead a life that is largely free of limitations.
But Lukas is also a handball player. In 2014, after the World Cup, he wanted to become a football star, just like all little boys. Eventually, the then nine-year-old joined the TSB Ravensburg handball team – and has stuck with it ever since. “During matches, I wear the implants under a headband, so I can communicate with my teammates just as normal,” he explains.
The situation is different, however, for the German national deaf handball team, which Lukas joined at the age of 15 after seeing an advert in a specialist magazine. “We don’t wear cochlear implants during matches, so we have to communicate using gestures,” he says, clenching his fist and spreading his thumb and little finger apart. This gesture is called a ‘Schorle’. It’s an opening manoeuvre in the backcourt where players pass the ball from the centre to the left and then spread out to the right.
And it was a tactic that took the German team to the final at the Deaflympics – the Olympic Games for the Deaf. For Lukas, it was the second time he’d been allowed to travel outside Europe with the team. In 2022 he played in Brazil; this time it was Tokyo. He spent two weeks in the Japanese capital. “It was pretty impressive – a huge city, so many lights and things you’ve never seen before,” he says. First, we did a bit of sightseeing, then it was time to focus fully on the six matches.
Their opponents were: Brazil, Turkey, Japan, Kenya and France. In the semi-final, Lukas and his team secured a resounding 29–18 victory over France. In the end, they found themselves up against the Croatians in the hall – just as they had in many matches before. And, unfortunately, they lost to the hot favourites once again, 30–23. “Croatia supports its team enormously; there’s even substantial prize money,” says Lukas.
In Germany, on the other hand, deaf handball players do not earn any money. Around four or five times a year, they meet at training camps somewhere in Germany to prepare for competitions. The whole programme is funded by the German Deaf Sports Federation, the umbrella organisation for all organised deaf sport in Germany. There are only around 25 deaf handball players in the whole of Germany.
The Knobis are all the more proud that Lukas is taking part. “Lukas kept us updated from Tokyo via our internal communication platform,” says our HR manager Annette Wildner, “we were absolutely on the edge of our seats with him!” According to Annette, diversity is also important to KNOBLAUCH when it comes to filling apprenticeship places.
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