Gritty Gridder Plays With Handicaps

Corey Nygaard, a 15-year-old sophomore at Stevenson High School, explains it simply.

“I’m a competitive person,” he said. “That’s why I enjoy football. I don’t expect favors on the football field. I do everything the other players do at practice and in the games.

“There is one difference. I have to pack a screwdriver with me.”

That’s because he has an artificial leg. He also was born with arms only to the elbow.

But, at 5-foot-4 1/2 and 115 pounds, he’s a junior varsity football player at his high school.

When he was a seventh grader at Wind River Middle School here, bolts in his artificial leg worked loose and it came apart during a football practice.

So he had to make a trip to the Shriner’s Hospital in Portland, Ore., to get his leg put back together.

Nygaard didn’t let his doctors know he was going to play football initially. But they found out when he took his leg in for repairs.

“When I told the doctors I was going to play this year, they said to wear the leg until it falls apart again,” he said. “It’s about ready to fall apart now. I’ve got duct tape holding it together.”

Nygaard plays on the offensive and defensive lines.

“I like playing defense because you can hold, grab and throw people down,” he said. “You get to hit somebody. I know the defensive assignments but I’ve got work to do on offense. I don’t know all the offensive stunts and stuff.”

Nygaard doesn’t expect to be treated differently, but he recalls he was when he played in middle school.

“When I was in seventh grade, some players wouldn’t hit me,” he explained. “They would back out of the way and let me go by. I guess they didn’t want to hurt me.”

Jim Hurley was the Wind River football coach who encouraged Nygaard to turn out for the sport. He now is the football coach at Stevenson High School.

“I encourage every kid in middle school to turn out for all four sports,” Hurley said. “But it was important for me to have Corey out for football because he needed to prove to himself that he could compete with anybody.