Wrestling Without Legs

This is an amazing story.

Staring at the last chocolate chip cookie in front of him, Trevon Jenifer is contemplating his discipline. How, like all of his teammates on Huntingtown High School’s wrestling team, is Jenifer going to make weight, especially if he wants to wrestle at 103 pounds, the lightest class on the team?

“Everybody’s trying to lose weight,” Jenifer tells a group of friends sitting nearby at a recent Huntingtown basketball game. “But I’ve got to gain weight, like eight, nine pounds.”

Jenifer laughs and chomps into the cookie. That’s taking one for the team. Then he plants his hands down on the first row of bleachers, levels his torso into his wheelchair parked on the gym floor, and whizzes to get another cookie.

Jenifer, 16, was born without any legs, the result of a condition called congenital amputation, in which a part or entire limb is missing at birth. Jenifer’s 95-pound body ends at his hip sockets.

And that’s where his amazing story begins.

Wheelchair track and basketball, Jenifer’s hobbies the past 10 years, allowed him the rush of a sport, yet failed to offer him the contact he yearned for from athletics. So he decided to try wrestling this season. Going into tonight’s home match against Thomas Stone, the junior has forged an 8-7 record with a combination of balance and upper-body strength that has helped him overcome his condition.”

If you click on the headline you can read the rest of the story. Pretty amazing stuff.

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