Carroll applauds an inspirational athlete

Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath runs through drills at practice with teammates. McGrath, a 220-pound senior tackle, plays with a prosthetic leg.

Staff photo by Jim Witmer Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath runs through drills at practice with teammates. McGrath, a 220-pound senior tackle, plays with a prosthetic leg.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Staff photo by Jim Witmer Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath takes a break during practice on Thursday, Oct. 29.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Staff Photo by Jim Witmer Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath, who plays with a prosthetic leg, gets ready for practice on Thursday, Oct. 29.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath stretches out at practice with teammates. McGrath plays with a prosthetic leg.

Staff photo by Jim Witmer Carroll High School lineman Jack McGrath stretches out at practice with teammates. McGrath plays with a prosthetic leg.

By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 2:55 AM Friday, October 30, 2009

After their 13-month-old son Jack had his leg amputated just above the knee, it didn’t take long for Bob and Patty McGrath to settle on a particular path of parenting.

All they had to do was watch their boy.

“Right from the start he’d flail and spin, roll and scoot himself, do whatever he had to do to get where he wanted to go,” Patty said. “We were going to raise him to believe he was handi-capable, not handicapped.”

So how did that work out?

• If you were at the Carroll High football field last Friday night — just before the Patriots edged Hamilton Badin, 27-24 — you’d have seen Jack, now 17 and a 220-pound senior offensive tackle, walk out to the middle of the field as one of Carroll’s captains for the game.

• Were you at Carroll’s football banquet following last season, you’d have witnessed head coach Steve Bartlett end the night by handing out his Coach’s Award.

“It’s a discretionary award, one that Coach Bartlett decides on,” Bob said. “And when he started talking, he didn’t give a name so that kind of added to the moment. He said he was giving it to an inspirational young man, someone who’s shown determination, drive, toughness, a good attitude, and then he called up Jack ... I can’t tell you how proud I was.”

“It made me cry,” Patty said.

• And finally, you could have been at that practice following a tough loss last season when Bartlett made his point to the team.

“Coach had us doing up-and-downs, and he was kinda yelling at us about our attitude, and then he sees Jack,” said Jay Holzapfel, another senior lineman and Jack’s pal since the second grade.

“Jack’s going though the drill nonstop, and that’s when Coach says, ‘Look at him, giving it everything he’s got, all on one leg. He’s got a bigger heart than a lot of you.’ ”

Big heart, one metal leg and now — as he takes part in the last regular-season varsity game of his prep career tonight at Fenwick — Jack McGrath has a football story that’s as uplifting as any in the Miami Valley this season.

No special treatment

Along with some digestive issues, Jack was born with a condition called tibial deficiency.

“He had no tibia — which is the weight-bearing bone in his leg — and no knee or ankle joint, either,” Patty said. “In the beginning, I felt so guilty. I’d done everything I could during my pregnancies — both with Jack and his sister Maura before that — to make sure my babies were healthy. I didn’t know why this happened and really we still don’t.”

Early on, Bob said, Jack had some similar questions: “We didn’t have answers, but I’d just say, ‘God has a plan for you and maybe one day we’ll see how it all fits together.’ ”

In the meantime, the Beavercreek couple “had to work very hard not to baby him,” Patty said.

And that’s what happened.

“My parents were never really protective of me,” Jack said. “They didn’t give me any special treatment. They wanted me to do everything like everybody else did so I’d be prepared for the world ahead.”

Sometimes that was easier said than done.

“When he was in junior high, he had an image thing going on,” Patty said. “He was overweight and had no one really encouraging him in sports.”

He was a good student — and has a 3.8 GPA now — but in junior high Jack said sports didn’t cross his mind: “I figured something as intense as football I wouldn’t be able to do it with my leg.”

Then he met Bartlett, who Bob McGrath calls “an extraordinary man.”

As the coach remembers it:

“Jack’s freshman year I saw him walking down the hall, and I said to myself, ‘Maybe I need to get this kid involved. I asked him if he’d like to be our manager the next season and he said sure.”

Jack had several friends on the team, and after a season toting water bottles and equipment bags, it wasn’t enough. He began lifting weights with the team, and then he made a decision.

“I figured if I was going to be out there as much as the guys playing, I might as well try playing, too,” he said.

“And everybody on the team was real receptive of me. It wasn’t like, ‘What’s he doing here?’ ”

One of his biggest backers was Bartlett: “Every kid deserves to be a part of something, and especially football because it’s such a great sport, such a great learning tool.”

‘Nothing I can’t do’

Some lessons came with their share of discomfort and pain.

“Those three-a-day practices took a toll on his stump,” Bob said. “The skin was rubbed raw, and finally he had to ask coach if it’d be OK, until it healed, if he could practice once a day.”

Last year there also was that $30,000-plus prosthetic leg — which he wraps in foam rubber to protect the other players — that got battered by all the contact. Now he has a different sports leg provided by the Shriners that has a bit more spring to it.

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