It’s hard for Jackson Yerkes to play hockey and not feel like he’s missing something. He’s a 12-year-old who lives in Concord, and he loves the sport. But when he takes the ice for practice, he encounters challenges that few of his peers do.

Yerkes began losing his hearing when he was 2 years old. First he wore hearing aids; now he has cochlear implants.

As much as he loves playing hockey, the circumstance has always made it extra difficult.

“The hockey part of it is fun,” Yerkes’ father Tom said. “But that extra piece of trying to hear a coach across the rink who’s yelling some instructions from the bench as you’re skating by with a helmet on, it’s just really hard to hear. He’s really only getting pieces of the communication part while he’s playing hockey, so it’s very difficult.”

Tom Yerkes has always coached his son’s teams, and they’d always receive a copy of the USA Hockey magazine. One day about three years ago, Jackson was thumbing through the latest issue when he noticed an ad for the Stan Mikita Hockey School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. It’s a hockey camp held annually outside Chicago, founded by a former Chicago Blackhawks player and now run by Kevin Delaney, who works for the Blackhawks in skating and skills development.

This past June, Yerkes attended the camp for the third year in a row. Whereas playing in Concord often fills him with a sense of apprehensiveness, fearful of missing an instruction or doing something wrong, the Stan Mikita camp frees him.

“When he goes out to Chicago and plays with these other kids who are all dealing with the same issues, just watching him, the stress just goes away,” Tom Yerkes said. “You can tell he’s just out there having fun.”

Roughly 0.2% of children in the United States are born with hearing loss, and as of two years ago, roughly 65,000 children in the United States have cochlear implants, according to the National Institutes of Health.

It’s an uncommon enough occurrence that especially as a middle school athlete, it can feel hard to fit in.

“Usually back home here on the sports teams, I usually feel like the odd one out,” Jackson Yerkes said. “But (at the Stan Mikita camp), I feel like I’m part of the group.”

At this year’s camp, Yerkes was presented the Nick Wehrling Award, given to a “Junior Varsity player who demonstrates strength and a willing spirit.”

“I just like shooting the puck and scoring goals,” he said. “I just like putting on my skates and just flying around out there.”

He might only be entering seventh grade this fall, but the Stan Mikita camp has provided him with lessons and experiences that he’ll carry with him for the rest of his life.

“Kids come from all over the country to attend this camp,” said Tom Yerkes. “I think it says something to the bonds that these kids make with each other.”