On the Swim Team They Call Him Bob
Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:07 am
During baseball season he's first base.
No legs? No problem
When the prostheses come off, it's all about heart
BY MICK McCABE
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
September 21, 2006
Alpena junior Jacob Orban scoots on caps of hard plastic that the maker of his artificial legs designed for him. He holds for kicks and is a backup lineman. "I played defense a couple of times in games this year already," he says. "I had a tackle; I have to make sure they recorded it." (Photos by RASHAUN RUCKER/Detroit Free Press)
ALPENA -- Jacob Orban makes his way through the hallways of Alpena High and down the steps to the locker room.
He is a 5-foot-11 junior when he begins removing his clothes and ... assorted body parts.
When he changes into his gear and climbs the steps to the outdoors, he emerges as a 4-foot member of the football team.
"That's how I am when I play," Jacob says. "So I figured that's how I should be listed in the program."
This is the story of a determined young man, born without legs below his knees, who just might be the most popular person in Alpena. He is so confident about himself that when the wrestling team bought hooded sweatshirts and put nicknames on the back, he insisted "Stubby" go on his.
Inspiration? Of course. A starter? You better believe it.
A star on kicking team
Jacob Orban hops on the back of Alex Elsenheimer, a junior who carries him across the gravel road to the practice field, while another teammate carries his shoulder pads and helmet.
Jacob, 15, holds for placekicks and is a backup defensive lineman on Alpena's varsity.
"I'm a starter," he says proudly. "I'm the first-string holder so I consider that to be a starter."
So does everyone else.
"There was a time when Jake thought about not playing," coach Jack Gebauer says. "I told him not to quit. We put him where he can succeed. If your quarterback is the holder, you can't afford to spend a lot of time on kicking. With Jake as the holder, we can afford to be very good."
After stretching to begin practice, the team moves to field goals and extra points. After a bad snap, Jacob yells "fire," which alerts teammates that the ball won't be kicked and they should start blocking for kicker Josh Aube.
The Alpena company that made Jacob's artificial legs also made caps of hard plastic that he wears when he takes off those legs. The caps allow him to scoot around the field.
Jacob, who weighs 120 pounds, flips the ball to Aube and then throws a block on a defender chasing his kicker.
"You should have been here yesterday," Aube says later. "He laid a kid out. He just stepped right up and knocked him down."
Jacob loves the contact. That's why this also will be his third year on the varsity wrestling team.
But for now his focus is on holding for kicks and trying to earn playing time on defense.
"He's the best holder I've had," Aube says. "The ball is there every time. It doesn't matter if the snap is a little low, he'll have it there for me."
When the team finishes kicking drills, Jacob and Aube continue to work together, perfecting their timing.
Later, Jacob flips balls to quarterbacks in a passing drill and eventually rotates into the defensive line. The blockers try to bury Jacob on each play and often land on him. He does not have much lateral speed, but occasionally he eludes blockers and makes a tackle, which prompts high-fives from his defensive teammates.
A fight from the start
Jacob's right leg ends in the middle of his knee and his left leg extends just below the knee.
"I don't know what happened," he says. "I wasn't really given an exact reason. The doctors don't know 100% why."
His mother, Kelly Jones, had difficult deliveries with four of her five children, who are now all fine. Her older son, Tyler, wasn't breathing when he was born and doctors told her he wouldn't live 2 hours. Desi had apnea at birth and was touch and go for a while. Shian was born so jaundiced she nearly needed a blood transfusion.
"When Jacob was born the doctor said: 'He's a boy, but he's missing his lower legs,' " his mother recalls. "I just asked if he was breathing. If he was alive and breathing, that's good enough for me."
It was good enough then, but not for long.
Jones encouraged her son to try everything his brother, sisters and friends tried.
"He even skateboards," she says. "He rollerblades with his hands. I let him do everything."
Not exactly everything.
"Except for front flips off the garage into the pool," Jacob says. "She didn't like that."
Jacob says he didn't notice he was different from other kids until he entered elementary school.
"People looked at me different," he says. "I didn't really acknowledge it. I ignored it."
He learned to live with it as kids called him "peg leg" and other names. But in the sixth grade someone called him something he didn't like. Jacob exploded.
"It was on the playground and I had had enough of it," he says. "I finally snapped. I jumped on this kid and got him on the ground and started swinging. I got one or two punches on his face and a bunch to his stomach and chest.
"I wasn't looking to hurt him, I was looking to prove a point."
That was the end of the teasing.
Proving people wrong
Sports have been a mainstay in Jacob's life. He played baseball and flag football as a youngster. In baseball he wore his legs only when he pitched. He played third base and catcher without legs and one year made the all-star team.
When he was in the sixth grade, he went out for wrestling, won his first match and was hooked on that sport.
"You can basically beat the living crap out of someone and not get in trouble," he says.
Jacob wrestled at 103 pounds as a freshman and compiled a 16-17 record. Last season he wrestled at 112 and was 25-17.
"Because I don't have legs, I can't get leverage," he says. "But wrestling at 112, I have the upper body of someone who wrestles at 130."
He has the heart of a superheavyweight.
"He's quite the kid," says Jake Stenz, Alpena's wrestling coach. "He has a great attitude about everything. This summer we went down to a wrestling camp in St. Paris, Ohio. It was a pretty intense camp, but we didn't tell them about Jake's handicap. When we got there, the director said he never had anyone else like him, but Jake did everything he asked the other guys to do."
Besides a sense of humor, Jacob has developed a bit of a chip on his shoulder. He loves to prove people wrong. It has come from years of hearing people tell him things he would never be able to accomplish.
"Doctors said I wouldn't be able to bend over and pick something up off the ground and straighten back up," Jacob says. "They told me I'd never be able to ride a bike. They said I couldn't ... get up from sitting on the ground. I've done every single thing they said I couldn't do. Usually, that pushes me to do it."
Breaking all the old rules
Jacob barely slept before Alpena's football opener last month. He played on the junior varsity last season, but making the varsity was special. He worried about what he might do if a snap was particularly bad, but that hasn't happened yet.
Jacob would like to take a bad snap, fake a pitch to Aube and run the other way.
"I need to talk to the MHSAA and see what I can do," he says of the Michigan High School Athletic Association. "Nobody knows if I'm down because I'm already on my knees or if I'm not down until my hips are down."
Nate Hampton, assistant director of the MHSAA, is on the national rules committee and says "he'd be allowed to run."
"Kids with lower legs are down when their knees touch the ground," Hampton says. "He doesn't have lower legs so that rule doesn't apply to him. It would have to be a hip or a thigh or his butt, something other than a hand or an elbow, for him to be down."
That will be music to Jacob's ears, but the thought of Jacob carrying the ball might not go over so well with Gebauer.
"If I scored, he'd be fine with it," Jacob says with a smile.
When practice ends, he hops up on Elsenheimer's back and is carried back to the locker room by his buddy, who has done it for three years.
"It benefits both of us," Elsenheimer says. "My legs get a good workout and it gets him over the gravel."
Elsenheimer kids Jacob about putting on weight and every once in a while threatens to drop him.
"I try to drop him but he's got this vise grip," Elsenheimer says. "And he knows how to hurt me when I let go. Over the years he's gotten heavier and heavier. I tell him he's got to start losing weight for wrestling."
Although he has more individual success in wrestling, Jacob loves being on the football team. He loves that he is the holder and contributes to the Wildcats, who are 1-3.
"I don't feel like I'm just the mascot," he says. "When we lose I get really upset, and when we win, I'm really into it. I feel all the emotions everybody else feels. I love running out there before the game."
Jacob, who has a 3.32 grade-point average, won't turn 16 until November and is one of the youngest students in his class.
"They even wanted to move me ahead a grade when I was in elementary school," he says. "I can be smart when I want to be."
He can be anything when he wants to be -- like a football player, a starter no less, without lower legs.