Ability Beyond Incapability

Who says a young boy with special needs cannot be a good basketball player? Not for this 17-year old boy who manages their school’s basketball team in Greece Athena High School, Rochester, New York. His name is Jason McElway.

For the past couple of years, he’s been assisting their team’s coach Jim Johnson, helping him with whatever their team needs. Jason hands over water and towels off sweat of players in the team. With that, he’s equally motivated and enthusiastic in the team as the players do.

Since he has been very devoted to the team, their coach decided to allow him to wear jersey during one of their games. Jason hadn’t to play necessarily, but their coach just wanted him to feel how it is to wear jersey–uncustomary from his long sleeves and tie attire. But surprisingly, their coach stood in the last four minutes of the game and called Jason to play! There was a cheer from the fans! After years of handing over water and toweling off sweat of other people, he was
finally in a game!

He missed out his first two shots, but his third went a 3-pointer and was succeeded with five more shots, averaging 20 points at the end of the game!

Jason is autistic, and just like what his father said, he never had a problem expressing himself in basketball.

There may be many Jasons in our community or maybe we see ourselves as Jasons, having that certain incapability. But like Jason too, let us look beyond that incapability and believe that we can do what we want and destined to do.

Source: www.youtube.com, www.inspirationalvideocollection.com