Oak Park hockey player isn't held back by his prosthetic leg

Kansas City Star

March 02, 2008

Although it happened two years ago, Jake Brown still shakes his head at the memory.

Brown, an Oak Park High School hockey player, skated into the offensive zone during a game and was checked into the boards.

'I was down in the corner and got nailed,' Brown recalls. 'I fell over, and the leg was just sitting back behind me.'

Yes. Part of Brown's right leg lay on the ice, a few feet behind him.

'My team and the parents of my team,' Brown says, a sly grin forming, 'were laughing like crazy.'

How's that?

Brown is an amputee who has a prosthetic leg from the knee down. His team, of course, knew that. But the opponents?

'The other team,' Brown says, 'I don't know, I couldn't really hear the other team. But the other parents were like, 'Oh, my god, is the kid OK?' '

Actually, Brown is better than OK.

Now a junior at Oak Park, Brown scored seven goals in 19 games this season. That's no small accomplishment for any player, particularly Brown, who was born in 1990 with fibular hemimelia in his right leg.

That is a deficiency or absence of a fibula bone. The fibula is the smaller of the lower leg bones and stabilizes the ankle. Brown was born without a fibula. Additionally, his tibia, the larger bone in the lower leg, was curved, and he had only three toes on the foot.

Tonya Brown, Jake's mother, says the family consulted with doctors all over Kansas City, but few had even heard of fibular hemimelia. The early prognosis was that Jake would never walk.

The Browns finally found comfort at Shriners Hospital in St. Louis when they met a family from Indiana with a daughter Jake's age who also had the condition. Additionally, the Shriners doctors were familiar with the condition.

Unfortunately, the best course of action was amputation.

It wasn't an easy decision, but while Jake was just 10 months old, Tonya placed Jake in the hands of the surgical staff at Shriners Hospital, and Jake's right leg was removed below the knee.

'It was awful,' Tonya says. 'That was the worst day of my life. It's like one of those decisions that you can't take back if something goes wrong.'

The surgery was a success, and a few months later, Jake was fitted with a prosthetic for the first time.

Tonya initially fretted about Jake's future. However, Shriners holds sports days, and in those visits her fears began to vanish. Baseball, basketball, whatever, Jake was in his element -- just like any other sports-minded boy.

Tonya did her part by not treating Jake any different than her other son, Josh.

'I've never been one to not let him try something, and I know he's going to fall,' Tonya says.

'When he was really small and first starting to walk and people didn't know about his leg, they probably thought I was the most horrid parent ever, because I would let him fall. But I can see the difference now. Because that parent is still right there to catch his child, and mine's running back and forth and shooting.

'He's never going to know what he can accomplish if you're always there.'

One person who was always around was Josh, who is three years older and a natural-born jock. As is the case with many younger brothers, Jake was Josh's shadow.

The brothers started with roller hockey, but once Josh wanted to hit the ice, there was no stopping him -- or Jake.

'Athletics just kind of came to me naturally, I guess,' Jake says. 'I always liked to play sports. Even as a little kid, I never let it get in my way. I just went out and did it.

'My brother's friend got me into (hockey), and then my older brother was playing, and I had to do what my older brother does.'

However, skating did provide a challenge for a kid with a prosthetic leg.

'My parents, and my brother especially, would push me to do it, no matter what,' Brown says. 'I'd just keeping working and I'd learn that I can do it.'

Brown actually has two different kinds of prosthetic legs. He got a new one about a year ago. It's made of carbon fiber and has a more flexible foot that helps with walking. His other one has a stationary foot, which he's been using since he started playing hockey eight years ago. It's the one he still uses on the ice.

At a recent practice, Brown glided down the ice and unleashed a shot that buzzed past the goal. That's the kid with the prosthetic leg?

In addition to his goals, Brown tallied 11 assists. While Oak Park's season came to a close Feb. 21 with a playoff loss to St. Joseph, Brown is not finished.

Next month he'll represent his country at the World Amputee Hockey Championships on April 2-6 in Marlborough, Mass.

In a tuneup for that competition, the U.S. team

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