Utahns Taegan Frandsen Ferrin, Sophie Post and Payton DeGraw won gold at the 2025 Deaflympics in Tokyo after beating Japan 4-0 on Monday.
Now, the U.S. women’s deaf national soccer team has won every Deaflympics tournament (2005, 2009, 2013, 2022, 2025).
Monday’s win also marked the team’s eighth overall world championship in its 20-year history.
The U.S. opened the tournament with a 5-0 win over Japan before steamrolling Great Britain 14-0 and crushing Australia 12-0 in the semifinal.
The team has never lost a game since its inception in 2005, winning 44 games and drawing once, which resulted in a win following a penalty shootout.
All three Utahns saw the pitch during the tournament.
Post, a forward, played in all four games and tallied three assists. Ferrin, a goalkeeper, started and posted the clean sheet in the 12-0 win over Australia. DeGraw, who plays both goalkeeper and forward, played in the tournament opener against Japan.
Both Post and Ferrin had previously played and won gold at the 2022 Deaflympics.
The 2025 tournament was DeGraw’s first Deaflympics. DeGraw, who was born deaf, began playing with the team in 2018.
“I feel really honored and privileged to be chosen to go for the Deaflympics to represent my country,” DeGraw told the Deseret News before the tournament through ASL interpreter Emily Thiel.
The impact of Amy Griffin and Joy Fawcett
The 2025 Deaflympics also served as a goodbye for head coach Amy Griffin and assistant coach Joy Fawcett, who both previously won World Cups with the senior women’s national team.
Post is the longest tenured Utahn on the team and has been coached by Griffin and Fawcett since 2017.
“I feel like they both have contributed to who I am as a person, and just really made me want to work harder, want to be better in my life and career in soccer,” she said.
Being able to be coached by both Griffin and Fawcett has been a blessing for Ferrin.
Griffin is a former goalkeeper. She previously coached at the University of Washington as an assistant coach, where she was a goalkeeping specialist.
While at Washington, she coached World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo.
“Amy is such a great role model as a goalkeeper, and she is an amazing goalkeeper coach. I remember my first practice on the team. She coached us, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, Amy is coaching me,’ and it’s just so mind blowing,” Ferrin said. “She’s given so much support, so much advice that I wouldn’t be able to trade anything for the world.”
Ferrin also has great appreciation for Fawcett and the work she did to support players who are also moms, like Ferrin, who is the mom to 7-month-old Nora.
Nora traveled to Tokyo with Ferrin for the Deaflympics and had been to two previous national team camps. She also joined her mom in the team photo Monday following the U.S.’s win in the gold medal match.
“Joy is the reason why I get to bring Nora to all my camps and all the tournaments because she was the first national team player that had kids,” she said. “So she got to bring her kids along to her camps and her tournaments. And she fought for that, for herself, and she has fought that for extended national team players as well, specifically for the deaf team.”