Minnesota teen with prosthetic legs finds success on football field

From The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis:

When you watch Shawn McGirl (pictured) play football, you might not notice anything right away. But as your eyes scan down, something seems, well, different.

It's his ankles. Underneath the long black socks that football players from White Bear Lake High School wear with their uniforms, Shawn's ankles seem especially thin and somehow oddly angled.

That's because his ankles are made not of flesh and bone, but titanium. His shins are fiberglass and carbon fiber. His feet are mostly carbon fiber.

From a point just below both knees, McGirl has prosthetic legs and feet.

He's a junior tight end, 6 feet 1 and 190 pounds of willpower and attitude. His ankles might look like something out of a Terminator movie, but a much more apt nickname for Shawn McGirl is the Determinator.

"He's pretty inspiring," said Brian Murphy, a classmate and White Bear Lake offensive lineman who has known McGirl since second grade. Back then, McGirl had the legs with which he was born, but in third grade an illness normally as innocuous as strep throat took him and his parents down a long, frightening road.

The case of strep throat quickly developed into an infection that entered his bloodstream and caused multi-system organ failure. That's when all heck broke loose. Scott and Sonja McGirl took their only child to the emergency room at St. John's Hospital in Maplewood. Before long he was taken by ambulance to Children's Hospital of St. Paul.

"It started sending blood only to my vital organs to protect them, like my brain and my heart," Shawn explained. "My feet and my fingers started to actually die. They turned black."

In addition to his lower legs, he also lost some fingers and the tips of several others. Amputation of one arm was discussed, as were even worse outcomes.

"At one point in time you looked at him and you thought he might be nothing but a torso," Scott McGirl said. "He had more tubes coming out of him than in a horror movie. And it all just happened so quickly."

Said Sonja McGirl: "We were very close to losing him, several times. It was a nightmare. I still think about it every day. It never goes away."

Shawn was on so much medication that he doesn't remember much about his time in the hospital -- time that included his ninth birthday. But after his legs were amputated at Twin Cities Shriners Hospital in Minneapolis and he was fitted with prosthetic legs, he made a vow: He would walk to school.

The McGirls live across the street from Lakeaires Elementary in White Bear Lake. Shawn returned home with his prosthetics in May, worked all summer and indeed walked to school that September.

"He had to learn to walk again," Sonja said. "It's like walking on stilts."

Matt Morel, a certified prosthetist orthotist at Shriners Hospital, has worked with Shawn for years. The feet on his prosthetics are manufactured by a company in Iceland. Shawn has broken several prosthetic feet, including one last summer during workouts in preparation for the football season.

"Shawn is a unique individual," Morel said. "It takes him almost three times as much energy to do something compared to you and I, so for him to play football is good, and to play at a varsity level is awesome."

Shawn plays mainly on the White Bear Lake junior varsity, and he has seen action in a couple of varsity games this season. He also plays baseball and has a grade-point average of 3.928, taking Advanced Placement classes. He got his driver's license last spring when he turned 16.

White Bear Lake football coach Bob Jackson first saw Shawn at summer camps when he was in grade school.

"Initially I was a little concerned about how we could meet his needs," Jackson said. "But I found out right away his needs are the same as anyone else. You coach him and have an expectation for him, and he's fine. He is an inspiration to all of us."

Shawn is matter of fact about his condition as well as the inspiration he provides.

Asked if he feels lucky or unlucky, he said, "I don't really think about that. Other people are a lot worse off than me."

His buddy, Brian Murphy, said Shawn is just one of the guys.

"We don't even think about [his physical condition]," Murphy said. "He just likes to hang out and have fun, like everybody else."

Shawn said he loves the camaraderie of being with his friends, whether it's on the football team or in school. When he wears long pants, anybody who didn't know him would be hard-pressed to discern anything different about him. When he wears shorts -- as he did when he took his driving test -- it's easy to notice the black titanium structures that act as his ankles. Little kids in particular will sometimes loudly point that out.

"I'm not a really big fan of younger kids anymore," Shawn said with a smile.

On the football practice field, Shawn works mainly on the scout team to help the Bears prepare for their next opponent. They play at Roseville tonight in the last game of the regular season. Shawn is unlikely to get into the game, but that doesn't detract from what he means to his team.

"He volunteers all the time in practice, he's really good for team chemistry and nothing slows him down," Jackson said. "He's here every day and he works as hard as anybody."

According to Morel, hard work is common for amputee athletes.

"We do have a number of patients here who are bilateral below-knee amputees that play sports, and they all have one thing in common. Besides being amputees, they have a very hard work ethic," he said. "These guys are driven to succeed with or without legs."