 |
|
.gif) |
|
|
|
| |
Monday, November 02, 2009
|
|
Article of the Week-Challenges Don't Stop Two High School Athletes in Arizona
 |
|
|
By Richard Obert, The Arizona Republic
Every time Jesse Ortiz kicks the ball through the uprights, the woman on the sideline with the camera begins to cry.
It is another point for the Peoria Centennial football team, and a major point for a mother who said she once was told by doctors that her autistic son likely would grow up in a group home learning basic life skills.
"When he was little, I wouldn't have dreamt that any of this would be happening," Margaret Ortiz said. "We want to just pinch each other."
Now a senior, Jesse has a 3.2 grade-point average and is the kicker for the team ranked fourth in the nation by USA TODAY.
North of the Loop 101 at Peoria Sunrise Mountain, 14-year-old Brooke Alden, a sophomore who moved up a grade, recently qualified for the state golf tournament
despite not taking up the sport until this year and nearly losing her left leg three years ago to bone cancer.
"She never ceases to amaze me with the things she does," her father Scott Alden said. "I always thought she had that before she got sick. She proves it over and over again."
Knocking down barriers
Margaret and Manny Ortiz figured something was wrong with Jesse at an early age when he quickly would lose interest in things, avoided eye contact and wouldn't talk. Living in Southern California, they had him tested and he was diagnosed with autism, Margaret said.
"That is where the journey begins," she said. "His prognosis was not good. There were challenges with language. He was in small, self-contained groups and behavior groups at UCLA. It's been a long journey."
After moving to Peoria, Jesse reached high school, and the transformation was remarkable.
"He came home one day and said, 'I want to play football,' " Margaret said. "He never played any sports before. We didn't know how challenging it would be. His whole life was in speech and behavior therapy.
"It gave him a. .. sense of him belonging to a team where he felt he could play a role."
He started out as a lineman but got a shot at kicker during a freshman game.
"As I'm going up to kick the field goal, I hear them chanting my name," he said. "I made the field goal. I had three attempts and made all of them. That's when I realized it was a calling for me."
Through the first eight games this season, Ortiz made 49 of 52 extra-point attempts and was 2 for 2 on field goals.
Perseverance pays
Alden played quarterback and receiver on an all-boys flag-football team when she was 10 and 11.
At 11, she was icing her knee and taking ibuprofen almost nightly because of persistent pain. She said her doctor told her it was growing pains.
She broke her femur in a fall at school, and cancer cells spread through her body, her mother said.
"(Doctors) said, 'There is no reason a girl your age should be breaking her femur just from falling in recess,' " Brooke said. "I went to Phoenix Children's Hospital for a biopsy. I was there a long time."
She received chemotherapy, lost her hair and got to meet her idol, Jon Bon Jovi, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Scott Alden, with help from his 1993 Tempe Corona del Sol baseball teammates, raised $70,000 to have an expandable, adjustable prosthesis placed in her left leg.
After complications and two more surgeries, she began fully walking again in December, Danielle said.
Brooke can bend her leg only 70 degrees but says, "It's enough to walk."
Swimming and golf were low impact enough for her to receive a medical release. She chose golf.
As her team's No. 2 player, Brooke said she is averaging 62 shots per nine holes.
As others carry their bags on their shoulders, Alden is allowed to pull a cart. She won't ride.
"Even though I don't like the hot days, in the end I can appreciate this," she said.
Both Alden and Ortiz never doubted they'd see light in their journeys.
"I really don't think there was a darkness," Alden said. "I was always optimistic in a way that I was naive and didn't know enough."
Ortiz now considers attending college away from home and a future working with disabled children in adapted physical-education classes.
"Autism is not a disease; it's an evolution," Jesse said. "I refuse to treat it as a disease. I see it as what I can do with it."
Copyright 2009 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc | |
|
|
|
|