Juanyeh Thomas

Juanyeh Thomas, a safety on the Georgia Tech football team, spoke about his stuttering during a radio interview with the ACC Network.

“I stutter,” Thomas said. “I’m going to forever stutter. But I have gotten better at it. But, like I said, the more I talk, the more I get better at it, then the more confident I feel about it to talk.”

In elementary school speaking was a struggle for Thomas.

“Back then, it was bad to where almost every sentence I said, I would stutter,” he said.

The football player credits his fourth grade teacher with helping him.

“Honestly, getting over stuttering and dealing with it all has made me a more confident person in every aspect of life,” Thomas said. “Don’t worry about what other people say. Just keep talking. One day, you will get better at it, and then you will look back at it and be thankful for that.”

Now, he says, “I love talking. It’s my thing.”

Click here to read the entire article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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Thank you for your interest in my life long problem with my speech and communication skills. I was a very shy and reserved young man who could not speak at all without severely stuttering until I was 28 years old. Always a success in the classroom and on the basketball court, I took refuge in the things that I did well as a youngster. A straight A student, my athletic abilities covered the deficiencies that limited my overall growth and development. The game of basketball was my religion, the gym my church. It was a convenient way of avoiding my responsibilities of developing my human relation skills.

When I was 28, a chance encounter at a social event with Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Glickman completely changed my life in so many ways that things have never been the same since, nor have they ever been better. That day, in a very brief, private conversation (one way, mind you, since I literally could not speak at the time) Marty explained, patiently and concisely, that talking, communicating was a skill not a gift or a birthright and that like any skill, whether it be sports, music, business or whatever, needed to be developed over a lifetime of hard work, discipline, organization and practice. Marty gave me some simple tips that day and then encouraged me to take those keys and apply them to methods of learning that I had received from the special teachers that I had come across in my life, particularly the 6 Hall of Fame basketball coaches that I had played for throughout my career. The beginning of my whole new life was as simple as that. No gimmicks, tricks or shortcuts. Just the realization that with some help, guidance and a lot of hard work that I too could do what seemed so easy, simple and natural to everyone else, yet seemed impossibly out of my reach and comprehension.

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