Stand-up amputee basketball team gains a fan base

From The Suffolk Times in N.Y.. In the picture, Steve Osborne of AMP1 drove down the lane to attempt a layup against the Mattituck all-star team.

As a kid, Scott Odom said, he used to spend hours writing his name on a sheet of paper, practicing for the day when someone would ask him for it. Now they do.

After AMP1, purported to be the nation's first stand-up amputee basketball team that Odom founded and captains, beat a Mattituck all-star team by a 49-46 score on Friday night at Mattituck High School, a young boy asked Odom for his autograph. He got it.

Odom, 25, said the team spoke to kids about the challenges they face and how people treated them and made fun of them because of how they looked different and were different because they are missing part of one or more limbs. Rather than let the teasing get to them, Odom said, AMP1 embraced it, in part by having all of their jersey numbers include the number "1/2."

"We like to have fun and laugh, and we think that's a good part of the recovery process," Odom said. "Part of being comfortable with who you are is making fun of yourself."

What makes them secure and happy is playing competitive basketball. Several player bios on AMP1's Web site (www.amp1basketball.com) mention how they were guided away from competitive stand-up basketball.

"We want to show them that we can play stand-up basketball," AMP1's R. J. Dozier, who was playing in his first game with the team, said. "We don't have to play wheelchair basketball."

Not only did AMP1 garner the respect of the elementary school students they spoke with earlier on Friday -- and who spent extended portions of the game pounding the bleachers with their palms and chanting "AMP1!" -- but they impressed their competition as well.

"They're good," Mattituck senior varsity basketball player Zach Tyler said. "They're probably better than a couple of the teams we played in our league this year. As far as team basketball goes, they're incredible. They move the ball so well. They do everything a normal team does but at a slower pace. And it doesn't even matter because they do things at their own pace and it works."

With a 7-0 run, AMP1 took a 17-8 lead with 7 minutes 23 seconds remaining in the first half, and was up by 24-16 at halftime. Tyler said he thought the game would remain close but his team, which included the seniors on both Mattituck's girls and boys basketball teams and their coaches, could not stop AMP1's outside shooting. AMP1 eventually widened its lead to 14 before ending the third quarter ahead, 43-32.

Odom led AMP1 with 19 points and five three-pointers. Some of those shots came from five or six feet beyond the arc. He said he spends hours in the gym working on his shot. And the confidence he had in it showed. While he missed every three-point attempt he took in the second quarter, the shot started falling for him again in the third.

Odom takes the game this seriously because he spent more than eight years trying to put a team together. AMP1 has been playing together for less than a year, he said. AMP1 travels across the country and organizes games like Friday's charity event in Mattituck, where AMP1 player Ray Gurriere lives, to raise money for the Mattituck-Cutchogue Student Teacher Association. Many of their games are in players' home towns, but Odom has bigger plans.

"We're fighting for a sport that doesn't exist," Odom said. "We feel that once this does become a league, it's going to take over sports. No doubt in my mind."

To that end, Odom, who has a full-time job working at a hospital, spends his free time recruiting players through YouTube videos, which is how he found Dozier. Dozier was hooked after his first game. So were the fans, who got a real show when Mattituck's Emily Ianno and Colin McCoy led their team on a 14-0 run to tie the score at 43 with 3:13 left. A minute later, AMP1's Steve Osborne muscled his way through the lane for a layup over Tyler. Tyler answered with a three-pointer from the top of the arc as Odom charged at him. That shot gave Mattituck its first lead of the night at 46-45.

That lasted 52 seconds, until another Osborne jumper. Down 49-46 with 2.6 seconds left, Mattituck had one more shot, but Tyler's three-point attempt at the buzzer hit the rim and rolled away.

"That was fun," said the AMP1 coach, Joey Farrell, who is a Mattituck resident.

The show will go on.