Bowling Green teen’s ASL journey takes her to Fenway Park

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WNKY) – What started with a conversation at church camp turned into an experience Sophia Brown never expected.

The 13-year-old Bowling Green Junior High eighth grader recently traveled to Boston, where she signed the national anthem at Fenway Park in front of more than 30,000 people.

Brown began learning American Sign Language this summer after meeting a deaf boy named Luke at church camp. Luke taught her some basic signs, and when camp ended, Brown decided she wanted to continue learning.

“Really just to be able to connect with the deaf community or the hard of hearing community,” Brown said. “If anything like that happens, you know, I could… I’ll be able to communicate with them and it was just a very fun experience.”

Brown began posting videos of herself signing songs on TikTok, initially just for fun. One of her early videos eventually reached about 3 million views, helping her gain followers and encouraging her to continue.

“I really just started doing the TikToks for fun,” Brown said.

Her videos eventually caught the attention of the Boston Red Sox. Brown had been in contact with the organization for about a month or two before the team invited her to sign the national anthem at Fenway Park.

For Brown, walking onto the field was both exciting and nerve-wracking.

“Definitely a little mindblowing and nerve wracking, but it was super exciting at the same time,” she said.

Her mother, Megan Brown, watched from the stands.

“I saw, you know, in a mother’s eyes. I saw my baby girl walking onto that field,” Megan said. “But when she got up there, I saw this grown woman who has just blossomed.”

Megan said she noticed her daughter’s passion for ASL when Sophia began putting time and effort into learning on her own.

“When she said she wanted to keep learning, I knew the second she set her mind to something, she was going to excel at it because that’s what she does,” Megan said.

Sophia has also found that learning ASL has changed the way she connects with other people.

“It just made me realize how much fun I have whenever doing those encounters and being able to just have full on conversations in sign language,” she said.

One of those connections happened at Fenway after the national anthem.

As Brown was walking back to her seat, a woman complimented her signing. The woman told Brown she wasn’t deaf or a child of a deaf adult but had been learning ASL for several years.

For Brown, the moment was a reminder of why she started learning in the first place.

“It just made me realize how much fun I have whenever doing those encounters and being able to just have full on conversations in sign language,” she said.

Megan said she is proud of her daughter not only for learning ASL but for using it to connect with others.

“I’m proud of her for not letting anybody hold her back from what she wanted to learn and accomplish,” she said.

And for Sophia, the experience at Fenway is not the end of the journey.

She plans to keep learning, creating videos and finding new ways to connect with people through ASL.