This is amazing...

[IrishAZ]

Some people just can't be stopped.

 

The Heart of a Champion

 

The heart of a champion

 

Born with no legs, Bobby Martin rises above

 

End Zone

 

By WAYNE COFFEY

DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER

 

Despite being born without legs, high school football player Bobby Martin ...

... refuses to be overshadowed by his circumstances.

 

DAYTON, Ohio - Five weeks ago, in the first football game of his life, a 3-foot-1, 110-pound nose tackle for the Colonel White High School Cougars pushed his powerful hands into the turf, found a gap and scrambled across the line of scrimmage.

 

There were six minutes left in the fourth quarter, against an Ohio powerhouse named Valley View High. Bobby Martin, No. 99 in green and gold, smacked into quarterback Derrick Velte, wrapped him in his arms and threw him for a five-yard loss.

 

The crowd stood and roared. Martin thrust up his hands. On the sideline, Colonel White assistant coach Kerry Ivy, a mountainous 342-pound man, had tears in his eyes. Who had ever seen a sack by a player with no legs before?

 

"Nice hit," Velte said.

 

"It felt great," Martin says, smiling.

 

Bobby Martin is a 17-year-old senior at Colonel White, an inner city kid with a wispy mustache and matchstick-thin sideburns that meet at his chin. He lives with his mother, Gloria, in a little white house with a wheelchair that sits in the living room, never used, and never will be, Martin having taken off the wheels. He says the chair is too cumbersome. It slows him down, makes him feel handicapped.

 

"Bobby has an extraordinary will to be normal," says Earl White, the head coach at Colonel White. The coach shakes his head, never fathoming that Bobby Martin would become perhaps the most suddenly celebrated prep football player in the country this season, that people from Sports Illustrated to ESPN to some outlet in Korea would want to talk to him, a third-string player for a team that doesn't even have a home field.

 

The team commutes to practice at an abandoned school a few miles away, a forlorn patch with bent goalposts, bare spots in the middle and grass as long as a hayfield on the flanks. Martin was on it on Friday, a beautiful autumn afternoon, ambushing teammates from behind, running down the field faster than you could ever imagine someone without legs running.

 

"His fingers are his cleats, and you never have to worry about them wearing down," Kerry Ivy says.

 

It was a congenital birth defect that brought Gloria Martin's youngest child into the world with half of a body on Nov. 3, 1987. It didn't stop him from placing second in the city as a 92-pound, middle-school wrestler four years ago, nor from emerging as perhaps the most intensely competitive player on Earl White's football team this season.

 

Indeed, the only force that has stopped him was a man in a striped shirt two weeks ago. Colonel White was playing Mt. Healthy of Cincinnati. The officials conferred at halftime. Dennis Daly, the chief of the officiating crew, announced that Martin could not play in the second half, citing a mandatory-equipment rule in the National Federation of State High School Associations handbook.

 

The rule stipulates that players must wear shoes, thigh pads and knee pads.

 

It is a big problem when you have no feet, thighs or knees.

 

"I thought they were trying to embarrass him," says Marquis Burns, a senior linebacker and captain, and a close friend of Martin's. "We were all really mad."

 

Martin was, too. Later he said it was the first time in his life he'd ever felt disabled. He simmered with anger on the sidelines. He cried.

 

"I felt like they were trying to take something away from me, and it wasn't right," Martin says.

 

A firestorm of protest erupted, and by the following Monday, the Ohio High School Athletic Association had stepped in, giving Martin clearance to play for the rest of the season. Still, the debate pressed on. Daly, who has declined to speak with reporters, has been pilloried in some corners of the press, while a few others have argued that Martin, who competes in both JV and varsity, typically getting in for a few punt returns and late-game downs, is making a mockery of the game.

 

"He's not making a mockery of the game. He loves the game," Kerry Ivy says.

 

Says John Dickerson, an assistant commissioner with the OHSAA, "I think the crew that didn't allow him to play has been very unjustly criticized for making a decision that they thought was in the best interests of the safety of the young man. Had the school maybe been pro-active initially and alerted us to what was an unusual situation, this whole thing probably could've been avoided."

 

* * *

 

When Gloria Martin was pregnant with Bobby and had her first ultrasound, the picture did not show her baby's legs. Three subsequent ultrasounds didn't show them either. Her doctor tried to reassure her, saying they could be concealed. "They were making excuses, because they didn't want me to worry," Gloria says, sitting in a small intake room in the downtown behavioral health center where she works. She was worried, and when she first saw her seven-pound, 13-ounce boy and learned that he would also need surgery for lower intestinal tract complications, she knew she had every right to be.

 

Gloria Martin's greatest solace came from Bobby himself. Even as a baby, he was determined not to let his disability stop him. He walked at 15 months. "He has always done the things he wants to do," Gloria Martin says. "I tried to raise him that way."

 

Life has never been easy for Bobby Martin. The family was poor, and his father, Robert James Martin Sr., has never been much of a factor in his life. In grade school Bobby was quick to anger and would get into altercations several times a week. As he grew up, verbal skirmishes would replace the physical kind. When he feels belittled or singled out, it can set him off, and so can hearing the word "no."

 

He's plenty tough - "If I had one guy to take with me into a fight in an alley, it would be Bobby," Ivy says - but not inclined to compliance when crossed.

 

"I didn't discipline him the way I did my other children," Gloria Martin says. "I spoiled him from the start."

 

Martin has been to three high schools, leaving the previous school because of a contentious relationship with an assistant principal. He's no stranger to Dayton police, having piled up some 17 motor-vehicle violations for driving without a license. How do you drive when you have no legs? You simply hop in and use a windshield squeegee or porch spindle to poke the brake and accelerator. The Martins owe a few thousand dollars in fines, Gloria says. Bobby loves driving, and loves working under the hood of his cars, but says his driving days are over.

 

"I sold (my Camaro) last summer," Bobby says. His principal means of transit now is his 12-inch by 18-inch skateboard. He does handstands on it, takes flying leaps off staircases with it. Martin loves to shock people. He'll cook for himself, springing up to the stovetop, sitting on the edge using the burners farthest away. During a break in practice Friday, he scrambled over to a pickup truck, hoisted himself into the back and vaulted onto the roof. With an upper body that can bench press 215 pounds, he gets places quickly.

 

"His ability to improvise is amazing," says Earl White, who used to be Bobby's wrestling coach.

 

Coaches and friends say that Martin's most notable quality of all, though, may be how comfortable he is with himself. This Friday is Homecoming at Colonel White. Martin is one of the candidates for Homecoming King. People in the school say he is the favorite to win, and Martin would love it. Around the team, there is constant joking back and forth, and Martin's leglessness is fair game. "Take a knee, Bobby," Kerry Ivy will holler. Or: "You can do it. Just put one foot in front of another." Not long ago, Martin came off the field and hollered in mock alarm, "I can't feel my legs! I can't feel my legs!" Everybody laughed.

 

"It's hard to be sad when you're around him," Ivy says.

 

Three days after the game in which he was banished, Martin and Ivy were in an area hospital visiting Ivy's nephew. A big story on Martin had just run in the local paper. The father of a 12-year-old boy named Michael Perry saw Martin and asked if he would be willing to go in and talk to his son. Michael Perry is suffering from a serious kidney disorder and had just had two blood transfusions. His spirits have been down. Martin said sure, jumped on his skateboard and wheeled down to Michael Perry's room. He hopped on the bed and talked to the boy, encouraging him to stay positive, to believe that God had a plan for him, and that God had brought them together that day. Afterward they held hands and said a prayer.

 

* * *

 

The Colonel White Cougars evened their record at 3-3 last night at Stargel Stadium in Cincinnati, about 75 minutes down Interstate 75. They beat Hughes Central High, 27-22. Martin has been frustrated by his lack of playing time - "He thinks he should be starting," Earl White says - but still produced another personal highlight against Hughes. With eight minutes left before halftime, Martin hustled downfield on a kickoff, jersey flapping behind him. He slammed into the returner at the 39-yard-line, helping to bring him down.

 

Martin is talking about playing baseball in the spring, and would like to go to college to study computer software and maybe keep playing football next year.

 

"I don't want it to end here," he says.

 

Late in Friday's practice, Martin was on the kicking team, hurtling his 37-inch body downfield, his arms his fulcrum, and his engine. His favorite player is Warren Sapp, and not unlike Sapp, he astonishes you with his movement. It isn't surprising to anyone on the team, though. Not much is.

 

"We don't consider him a special-needs kid, because he doesn't need nothing," Earl White says. "That's how he's always been. He has an obvious disability, but he doesn't look at himself that way, so we don't, either." The coach looks over to Martin, who is kibitzing with teammates, wrestling and tackling them, a full team member, half-body notwithstanding.

 

"I never felt sorry for myself," Bobby Martin says. "Anything anybody else can do, I can do. When people say I can't do stuff, I just like to prove them wrong."

 

Originally published on October 2, 2005

[NU Era]

Wow great story, thanks.

[AR Husker Fan]

I believe it's in the lastest issue of Sports Illustrated - or else last week's issue - that they pictured this guy in the "action" photos they appear near the front of each issue. Amazing, to say the least. If you can grab a copy, check it out.

[BigRedJake]

Wow.

[rawhide]

Excellent attitude and heart every athlete needs to have. Great story THX.

[Eric the Red]

Great stuff

[TheKiD]

That's truly an inspiring story. Cannot fathom how driven this kid must be to be able to play football with no legs... and to have a sack, and cover kickoff returns? Unbelievable.

[jasonr30]

that is just amazing..