Florgan Just Keeps Them Laughing : Soccer: Despite an all-terrain cycle accident that caused the loss of her left leg, Marina goalkeeper continues to enjoy life and the sport.

More than a year ago, Bobby Bruch, then first-year coach of the Marina girls’ soccer team, was demonstrating a kicking technique to his team when he asked Carrie Florgan to point her toe down.

“She said, ‘I can’t,’ which is a word I don’t tolerate,” Bruch recalled recently. “And I got down on my hands and knees and actually tried to grab her foot and point her toe down, and she was laughing, and she said, ‘See, I can’t--it’s fake.’

“I was astonished. I said, ‘I guess you can’t.’ ”

Florgan dances during practice, laughing, keeping her teammates loose.

Her coach calls her “Hammer,” but not because she’s got any dazzling hip-hop moves or knows the words to “Too Legit to Quit.” It’s because Florgan’s left leg, when she slide tackles, looks like a hammer.

Florgan, Marina’s 16-year-old junior goalkeeper, says she enjoys life too much to let an amputation get in the way of having a good time.

The all-terrain cycle accident that caused the loss of her left leg from just below the knee is now a distant memory for Florgan.

She can laugh in recalling the injury today.

As she explains, she was 8 years old, and she didn’t look both ways. A truck traversing a desert road outside Needles slammed into her left side, catapulting her 50 feet.

Her injuries rivaled Evel Knievel’s: broken arm, broken pelvis, broken femur, lacerations to the inside and outside of her left eye. Her foot was destroyed, and after two days of surgery, doctors realized they had to go in again.

Florgan was fitted with a prosthesis and began a new, initially awkward way of life.

She wondered as she lay in traction what her friends would think. Her mother, Shari, wondered about Carrie’s future, about boys, about fitting in.

She has fit in just fine, despite her so-called handicap. Getting dates isn’t a problem. She is the ASB junior class commissioner and expects to find out today if she won her bid for class president. She has a B average, and is involved in an all-girls’ club on campus. She has played softball and volleyball at the lower levels and earned her varsity letter in soccer.

Marina has benefited greatly from Florgan’s contribution in goal. The fifth-ranked Vikings are 10-3-3 overall, 4-1 in the Sunset League.

Those who know her agree that she is remarkably determined and doesn’t worry about her impairment on the field.

“That’s very important to being a goalie, especially when you’re coming out and players are going in on a one-on-one situation,” Bruch said. “She’ll go after them. She’ll throw her body in the way of a shot, or she’ll come out in a crowd and punch the ball away.”

She’s just as fearless outside the lines. Amy Peterson, one of Florgan’s closest friends, recalls stories of the two of them jumping off the 20-foot Trinidad Bridge in Huntington Harbor, snow skiing, riding Jet Skis and roller-blading.

“I like to do adventurous things,” Florgan said. “I don’t like when people try to feel sorry for me, because I feel like I’m just like everybody else and can do what everybody else can do.”

In fact, she does more than a lot of people. And she does it with a sense of humor that has helped her become remarkably well-adjusted.

Sarah Heilman, a senior teammate, recalled a club soccer tournament game a few years ago: “Her leg was really hurting her, and she had taken it off and put it in a bag. So her dad was carrying this bag and her leg was sticking out of it, and people were looking at her wondering how she could play. It was really funny.”

One thing that has remained consistent through the years has been Florgan’s ability to laugh--at Bruch when he made the discovery, at opponents who can’t believe their eyes, at the injury itself. Her friends recount different moments involving the leg--the time it came off while water skiing, when the ankle broke during practice, when she readjusted it between pitches during a freshman softball game--and talk about the humor of it all.

“One time in a game, she slide-tackled and her leg came off,” Heilman said. “People are afraid to laugh at first, but she just laughs, so people figure that she must not mind if people laugh with her.”

This is the first time her coach, Bruch, has had a player with such an obstacle. But when he played for Cliff McCrath at Seattle Pacific University, the NCAA’s second-winningest coach, he had a teammate who was missing an arm from below the elbow.

“For me as a player and coach,” Bruch said, “it’s real inspiring to see that these people have learned to deal with this, and they’re not afraid to do the things they enjoy, that it doesn’t hold them back.”

Florgan--who wants to study nursing because she appreciated how she was treated after her injury--thinks her strength is her upbeat attitude. She’s rarely bitter, though occasionally wonders what might have been.

“Sometimes I think about what I missed,” she said. “I wish I had the leg for looks and stuff. I miss it most for the looks and the ability to play sports.

“My parents (Frank and Shari) always told me I could do what I want, that nothing should stop me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do--live a normal life.”