A heart that can’t be pinned
Maryland wrestler never lets birth defect get him down
By ALAN GOLDENBACH
THE WASHINGTON POST
Staring at the last chocolate chip cookie in front of him, Trevon Jenifer is contemplating his discipline.
How, like all of his teammates on Huntingtown High School’s wrestling team, is Jenifer going to make weight, especially if he wants to wrestle at 103 pounds, the lightest class on the team?
“Everybody’s trying to lose weight, “Jenifer tells a group of friends sitting nearby at a recent Huntingtown, Md., basketball game. “But I’ve got to gain weight, like eight, nine pounds.”
Jenifer laughs and chomps into the cookie. That’s taking one for the team. Then he plants his hands down on the first row of bleachers, levels his torso into his wheelchair parked on the gym floor, and whizzes to get another cookie.
Jenifer, 16, was born without any legs, the result of a condition called congenital amputation, in which a part or entire limb is missing at birth. Jenifer’s 95-pound body ends at his hip sockets.
And that’s where his story begins.
Wheelchair track and basketball, Jenifer’s hobbies the past 10 years, allowed him the rush of a sport, yet failed to offer him the contact he yearned for from athletics. So he decided to try wrestling this season. Through last week, the junior has forged an 8-7 record this season with a combination of balance and upper-body strength that has helped him overcome his condition.
“This kid is utterly amazing. I was just awestruck, “said Jim Johnson, who officiated one of Jenifer’s matches last month. “I’ve been refereeing since 1968. I coached (wrestling) at the Maryland School for the Blind (from 1979 to ’84) and, let me you, this kid tops all of that.
“It was thrilling to watch him. I was at a point where it was hard to maintain the objectivity of being an official, instead of just watching to be entertained.”
According to Mitch Hull, director of national teams for USA Wrestling, while the sport has a history of athletes with similar disabilities, he is unaware of another current high school wrestler like Jenifer.
“Somebody with these types of handicaps has been eliminated from team sports, “said Hull, who, in 1989 at Purdue University, coached Terry Kissel, who lost his left leg in a farming accident as a youth. “Our sport is a situation where it challenges you ” ‘How hard are you going to work?’ (Your opponent) might be stronger. He might be quicker. But that element of working hard, there’s an appeal to a person who’s handicapped. You can’t measure their heart, and that’s what this sport really measures.”
Kyle Maynard, also a congenital amputee whose arms end just above his elbows and has no legs aside from a pair a short limbs and misshapen feet, attracted national attention last year when he went 35-16 as a senior at Collins Hill High in Suwanee, Ga.
Nick Ackerman, who lost both his legs at the knees to amputation when he was 1,½ because of a life-threatening form of bacterial meningitis, won the 174-pound title at the 2001 NCAA Division III Championships while wrestling for Simpson (Iowa) College.
Ask Jenifer about Maynard and Ackerman, and he returns a broad smile and acknowledgment of their stories. Press him and he’ll say the one disabled athlete who motivated him was Sonora High graduate Neil Parry, who played one down for San Jose State’s football team in 2003 with a prosthetic right leg, following a horrific on-field injury three years earlier that required amputation just below the knee.
“I heard about those stories, but I really didn’t see them or pay attention to it, “said Jenifer, whose family moved to Calvert County, Md., from Capitol Heights, Md., last April. “They do their thing and they did good, but I want to do better. I want to go beyond what they did.”
Jenifer’s athletic role model is two-legged, two-armed Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington. Mention his name and Jenifer zips across his bedroom to grab his Redskins cap.
“I feel like I’m them, and not missing any limbs, “Jenifer said. “That’s why I look up to LaVar.”
That’s Jenifer’s fundamental driving force ” he wants to be seen and treated like a two-legged person. He shuns offers of help, whether it’s opening a door or getting onto the school bus, even after he badly bruised his left shoulder in a match last Friday night.
“It’s the first time I’ve ever been hurt, “he said.
Jenifer wakes up daily at 5:15 a.m., and before he boards the school bus at 7, he takes his dog, Sheba, out for a walk. As with most of his everyday tasks, he dispenses with his wheelchair and opts instead to use his arms. He does it again when he gets home from practice bleary-eyed almost 12 hours later.
Following each home meet, Huntingtown’s wrestlers clean up the gym. While Jenifer can’t help his teammates roll up the mats, he’s in his wheelchair, circling the room and picking up folding chairs, three at a time, and putting them into a hallway closet.
“We had a fire drill, “said Mike Johnson, Jenifer’s math teacher, “and the kid ran down the stairs faster than I did.”
New to the community this fall, Jenifer’s inviting and warm personality has made classmates flock to him ” especially the girls at first-year Huntingtown.
“He’ll be the first one to open the door for you, “said Katie DeVore, a sophomore. “I’d say (he’s a flirt). He’s not really bad, you know, but he’s also not afraid to say hello to anyone.”
It is easy to look at Jenifer as someone different, but he has seen the same reflection in the mirror for 16 years. To him, life without legs is normal. He doesn’t think in terms of, “What if I had legs?”
“I think I’m doing good, but I keep thinking that if I had started (wrestling) my freshman year, my record might be undefeated, “Jenifer said firmly. “If I had both my legs, I may not be wrestling because I’m so into other sports.”
Eric Jenifer, Trevon’s stepfather, said, “But then he might not have the same drive.”
Eric Jenifer married Trevon’s mother, Connie, when Trevon was 2. About a year later, he remembers the first time being stunned by Trevon when he heard the toilet flush.
“We looked around and said, ‘Who’s in the bathroom?’ “Eric said.
Not only had Trevon used the toilet, he then planted his hands on the closed seat to move himself onto the sink and wash his hands. Then he lowered himself back down and dried his hands with a towel.
“After that, I said, ‘We’ve got to stop helping him,’ “said Eric, who works at a car dealership in Marlow Heights, Md.
In spite of Trevon’s condition, Eric said he had no hesitancy entering Connie’s life with her four children (Trevon is the third, and the only one disabled).
“I thought it would push him away, but it didn’t, “Connie said. “It pulled him closer.”
Connie, however, was not ready for a whole different kind of motherhood when Trevon was born.
She said sonograms showed no signs of any birth defects. But immediately after Trevon was born on Sept. 7, 1988, at Civista Medical Center in La Plata, he was rushed to Children’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., before his mother could see him.
Once she saw her son, Connie was petrified.
“It took me a month before I could hold him, “said Connie, who is an assistant manager at a CVS drugstore in Lexington Park, Md. “I was scared I was going to drop him. But once I found the strength to (hold him), I knew he would have the strength in him to overcome anything.”
Trevon Jenifer smiles when he recalls people “telling me, ‘You’re not going to graduate from college.'”
In addition to studying criminal justice and psychology, Jenifer wants to play a college sport. Eight schools, including Illinois, Oklahoma State, and Arizona, compete in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s Intercollegiate Division. Some offer other wheelchair sports, including track, tennis and rugby, as well as scholarships.
“I want to get a college scholarship, like wheelchair basketball or track, “Jenifer said.
Your fingers disappear in a handshake with Trevon Jenifer. Years of applying his hands as his means of transportation has turned them muscle-bound and enormous. His wrist to the tip of his middle finger measures nine inches.
Those hands are the pivot for all his conditioning exercises ” push-ups (in which he raises his entire body off the ground at twice the rate of his teammates), squats (where he treats the floor like a trampoline, and gets almost 12 inches airborne), weightlifting (he can bench press 120 pounds, though he said now that he is training year-round, he would like to be at 200 by the summer), and running (he does laps both on the outdoor track and in the wrestling room with his teammates ” using only his arms).
“Someone was complaining about running laps at practice, “sophomore teammate Robert Davidson said, “because we were the ones trying to keep up with him.”
Jenifer presents a unique challenge to opponents, as Patuxent, Md., sophomore Nick Damron learned. Because Jenifer has no legs to grab on to, it forces opponents to alter their approach.
“My first match against him, I was so scared, “said Damron, who lost to Jenifer last month but defeated him two weekends ago. “He knows people are kind of freaked out by him at first. But he’s phenomenal. I like wrestling him. He’s definitely one of the hardest workouts I get.
“He makes me a better wrestler because he forces you not to use your legs, just your arms.”
Some in the wrestling community say Jenifer may experience a backlash as his skills develop. His torso is much bigger and stronger than those of his 103-pound opponents because their weight is displaced throughout a larger body.
“There will be factions that say this guy has the biceps of a guy 180 pounds and his arm strength far exceeds that of a guy who’s 103 pounds, “said Jim Johnson, the referee. “He’s going to experience some opposition.”
Hull, of USA Wrestling, said: “We have the same issue in the sport when we’ve got girls wrestling boys. It’s tough on a person’s ego.”
Ackerman recalled one high school match when an opponent faked an injury and forfeited to him. He found out later that the kid thought Ackerman had an unfair advantage.
“That can raise the hair on my neck, “Ackerman said. “When you start winning, people start saying, ‘Well, he’s got an advantage.’ You weren’t saying that when I was losing. I’ll tell you what, if it’s such an advantage, cut off your legs and see how well you do.”
Right now, the only clear advantage Jenifer has is a home crowd wherever he wrestles. Spectators surrounded the mat for his matches at a recent tournament at Maryland’s Northern High, virtually ignoring the match on the adjacent mat five feet away.
“The whole stage stops to watch this kid, “Johnson said.
The stage was all Jenifer’s on Dec. 14, when Huntingtown hosted Eleanor Roosevelt. The 103-pound match wound up being the meet’s finale. Holding a one-point lead with 15 seconds left in his match, Jenifer shot in and grabbed his opponent’s left leg, knowing an escape would give his opponent one point and cost Jenifer a victory.
Jenifer held on, and collapsed backward as the final horn sounded.
It was his first victory, but it felt like everyone’s.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the place, “Huntingtown Athletic Director Valerie Harrington said.
Senior co-captain Dusty Jones picked up Jenifer and carried him from one high-five to another around the gym.
“It was definitely one of those things like in the movies, when you see something amazing happening for the first time and you’re just so happy to be a part of it, “Jones said. “That day, it felt better watching him win than winning yourself.”
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