Lake Brantley running back
Amani Brown, a Liberian orphan with one foot, is the Bill Buchalter Spirit Award winner.
Long before limping onto the Lake Brantley High football field for the first time, 4-year-old Amani Brown was adopted on a whim from an orphanage in war-torn Liberia.
He was recovering from leg burns and lost limbs, and was in the right place at the right time the day Denina Sterling arrived in the coastal city of Monrovia in West Africa intent on adopting a set of sisters.
She couldn’t find it in her heart to leave Amani behind — so she decided to take him, too. Never mind the unknowns that come with caring for a child who would need surgeries, therapy and additional assistance while he learned to walk without a right foot.
“We thought we were adopting a disabled kid that was going to need a lot of help, and what we discovered was a kid who was going to make it all work himself,” said Sterling, a middle-school teacher in Seminole County.
Aided by a prosthetic foot, an infectious smile and unsinkable resolve, Amani is making the most of his second chance at life.
This year’s recipient of the Orlando Sentinel Bill Buchalter Spirit Award amazed his coaches and peers last fall when he excelled as a running back and defensive back for a freshman football team that won seven of its eight games.
Amani then qualified for regionals in weightlifting as a 139-pound ninth-grader by benchpressing more than 200 pounds and hoisting 160 pounds over his head in the clean and jerk. Trying out for Lake Brantley’s track and field team in the spring is next on his sports agenda.
He does all of this as a stocky 5-foot, 3-inch tall athlete who competes in the grueling sport of football on just one foot.
“It feels good, being able to come out here and showcase what I can do and prove that I can be one of the guys,” said Amani.
He made quite the impression in varsity spring football practices last month while darting past defenders and leaving many in awe.
He’ll see playing time at the varsity level at some point during his sophomore season behind senior running back Damarius Good.
Playing football is a dream Amani has pursued since watching his older brother, an adoptee from Haiti, excel in the sport in Texas. Amani adopted that passion for sports and carried it from Colorado, where his family lived when he arrived in the U.S., to Texas and then to Florida when his family relocated to Altamonte Springs.
Amani played in the Central Florida Youth Football League as an eighth-grader under the guidance of coach David “Diesel” Rollins.
“I knew about his situation and was able to watch him when he was young, and knew right away he could play without any restrictions on him,” Lake Brantley football coach David Delfiacco said.
“He’s out here just like anybody else, overcoming what he’s got going on.”
Speedy tailback
Seated in the grandstands at a freshman football game last fall, Sterling couldn’t help but offer an explanation when another parent wondered aloud about her son in between plays.
“I don’t know why that kid’s always limping around out there,” a man said.
Similar comments have been overheard through the years. Amani played youth soccer before latching onto football for good in fifth grade.
“I just looked at him and said, … ‘Well, he doesn’t have a foot,’ ” Sterling said with a laugh.
The man’s surprised look was in line with that of others who’ve learned of Amani’s condition. It’s not a topic he’s comfortable discussing with most, but it’s come up more and more each time a burst of speed is followed by hobbles back to the huddle.
“We always saw him wearing socks over socks [on his leg] and not revealing his feet,” said freshman teammate Josh Hooper. “He didn’t really like to talk about it at first, but once we became friends a little more he opened up to us and showed us what was happening with him.”
It’s something of a miracle that Amani is able to run up and down a football field.
He doesn’t recall much, if anything, about ever being in Liberia as a child. Not the fire that damaged his legs at the tail end of the country’s 14-year civil war, nor the day Sterling picked him up from the orphanage.
Amani has no link to his biological family and has been unable to visit his birth village in Bong County because of safety and travel concerns.
Sterling says he survived his injuries as a toddler without the help of antibiotics, but needed early medical attention because scar tissue on one leg was causing his bone to bend unnaturally. The operations turned out to be more successful than doctors initially estimated.
Amani underwent extensive reconstructive surgery when he relocated to the U.S. with the help of Shriners Hospital, which has continued to assist and enable his desire to play sports. He now has very little muscle on the lower limb of his right leg and just two remaining toes on his left foot, which makes seeing him make graceful runs with a football all the more wondrous.
“We never really knew if he had the skill set to be a varsity player, but it’s crazy to see him run and perform like he has at his position,” Josh said. “He’s so fast, faster than most of the people on this team and he does it with one foot. It’s amazing.”
The things that appear most unusual to outsiders make for just another day in the life for Amani, whose adopted family includes 17 brothers and sisters, ranging in age, from all corners of the globe.
Perhaps the best thing his older siblings did in years past was to not treat him differently, as someone with a disability, while they played and competed against each other.
It’s a perspective that sticks with him to this day. He simply doesn’t see himself at a disadvantage compared to others on the football field.
“I just come out with the mindset that I’m going to be better than the guy who’s in front of me,” Amani said. “I feel like I can do everything just as good as anyone else.”
A bright future
There was a running joke within the family for a while after Amani lost his prosthetic foot in the Atlantic Ocean during a visit to the beach.
Each return trip was opened with, “Hey, Amani, have you seen your foot?”
Finding a football cleat that will properly fit over the prosthetic foot he wears seems to be about as likely as retrieving the artificial boot that floated into the sea. That’s the biggest athletic hurdle Amani faces while preparing for three more years of high school football. His comfort and mobility depends on it.
Amani has been fitted for a number of prosthetic designs over the years, one of which weighed up to 17 pounds, before settling on the plastic-covered foam attachment he uses today.
“It’s fairly painful to play football, but he loves it so much that he’s going to make it go,” Sterling said.
Ice and anti-inflammatories help relieve discomfort and soreness that arise from jamming what remains of his heel into the artificial foot with each cut up field or shift in movement.
The alternative would be to not play at all, an option that’s never been on the table.
“He hangs in there because there is no other solution,” Sterling said. “The only other solution that’s been given is to have it taken off, but it works way too well to have anybody take your leg off at the knee just because it’s uncomfortable. There’s no guarantee anything else will be comfortable, so it’s better to deal with it like he does.”
He deals with the discomfort with a smile on his face because of the bond he has with teammates and the guidance he receives from coaches.
Those relationships are what motivates Amani to keep returning to the classroom and working to overcome the struggles he has with coursework.
The story of former UCF linebacker Shaquem Griffin, who became the first one-handed player to be drafted by an NFL team earlier this year, inspired millions — including Amani. Maybe there’s also a bigger purpose in store for a kid who was nearly lost in the shuffle at an orphanage more than a decade ago.
Sometimes you’ve just got to take the baton and run with it when your time comes, no matter the difficulties that stand in the way.
“It’s really inspiring,” Amani said of Griffin’s saga. “That makes me want to go and play college football, hopefully make it to the NFL and see where I go in life.”