An ordinary player who’s anything but
Northwestern State’s Enmanuel, only player in Division I with only one arm, is turning heads
Enmanuel warms up Feb. 18 ahead of a game in Natchitoches, La. Enmanuel became known in high school for videos of his high-flying dunks; he’s still dunking for Northwestern State.
Hansel Enmanuel knew just what to do when his teammate DeMarcus Sharp was marooned in the lane after picking up his dribble, surrounded by defenders. Enmanuel bolted from the corner toward the basket.
Sharp, recognizing help was on the way, delivered a bounce pass to Enmanuel, who collected it in stride and vaulted toward the rim for what everyone on his team — and everyone else in the small arena — expected to be a stanchion-shaking dunk. But as Enmanuel approached the basket with the ball palmed in his right hand, he recalibrated. Instead of dunking, he laid the ball on the rim. It would not cooperate, rolling off. A few moments later, Corey Gipson, Enmanuel’s coach at Northwestern State, pulled him aside to deliver an indelicate truth: Enmanuel should have dunked it, but he had shied away from the contact.
“He went up worrying about missing instead of saying, ‘I’m going to put the women and children to bed,’ ” Gipson said later that night, after Northwestern State lost to the University of New Orleans.
What made their exchange so extraordinary, though, was just how ordinary it was — no mollycoddling or mincing of words, just a coach letting a freshman know that he expects more from him. In that moment, Enmanuel, who lost his left arm in a childhood accident, was right where he wanted to be — just another player on a team with NCAA Tournament ambitions.
Of course, Enmanuel is anything but. Enmanuel, 19, is the only player in Division I men’s