Vegas high school student defies odds, disability to play varsity football — VIDEO
Donald Lombard is used to being an underdog.
Born with a dysfunctional left limb from his shoulder down, the 16-year-old Desert Oasis junior grew up playing sports with the use of just one upper limb.
On the court, he shot baskets one-handed.
On the baseball field, he swung the bat one-handed.
On the gridiron, he took down running backs with one arm.
Now, at 6-foot 6-inches and 250 pounds, Lombard is making a name for himself doing the latter of the three. Halfway through the season, he’s competing for a spot on Diamondbacks’ varsity football team.
“He’s such an inspiration, it’s really incredible,” Desert Oasis coach Brad Talich said. “For a kid to operate with one arm and do as well as he can, it’s rare to see something like that.”
Lombard was born with brachial plexus injuries, a rare series of nerve injuries that affect about two to five in every 1,000 American newborns. Lombard got “stuck” during his delivery and lost movement in his left upper limb, he said. Today, he’s limited to shrugging his left shoulder and lifting his wrist.
Growing up with a limp arm hanging by his side, Lombard said kids at school would often poke fun at him.
“They’d ask me to do stuff they knew I couldn’t do and just make little comments about it,” he explained.
But at age 12, Lombard took up football, and the jokes stopped.
“It just came naturally for me, and I liked it,” he said. “It was a combination of people seeing that, and everybody was starting to mature, too.”
In nearly three years of continuing the sport at Desert Oasis, Lombard has become a regular contributor on the school’s junior varsity team.
Video from Lombard’s page on Hudl, a football recruiting website where athletes post video highlights, shows Lombard snapping the ball on a punt before running downfield and barreling over a Durango High School receiver as the player catches the kick. Other clips show Lombard chasing down running backs, and knocking down quarterbacks in the backfield.
Such highlight plays from Lombard aren’t unusual, Talich said. And they usually draw a loud response from the sidelines.
“People love it when Donald makes a play,” he said. “It gets everybody fired up.”
“He raises the team’s level,” added longtime friend and teammate Tyshun McClinton, the Diamondbacks’ starting tailback. “Definitely.”
Last Friday, for the first time this season, Lombard was called up to Desert Oasis’ varsity squad. He had a tackle and a deflected pass in the Diamondbacks’ 47-0 win over Bonanza High School.
The performance was enough to keep Lombard with the varsity squad through this week’s practices, Talich said, though he’ll likely be sent back down to the junior varsity team for tomorrow’s game against Cimarron-Memorial High School.
The head coach hopes to have Lombard back on the varsity team come playoff time, he said.
Considering Desert Oasis, at 5-2, is having the school’s best season in nearly a decade, that’s saying something.
“He’s a big kid and he’s really strong,” Talich said. “If he had the ability to use two arms, he’d likely be getting attention from colleges.”
Though he said he’s often commended for playing with a disability, Lombard can only describe himself with two words — “regular person.”
“It’s not that I’m not doing the same things as everyone else, I just learned how to do them a different way,” he said.
Lombard hears the well-intended compliments about what he may have achieved with two working upper limbs. But instead of lamenting on what could have been, Lombard says he’s content with the challenge at hand, and what lies ahead.
For now, his sights are set on being a full-time varsity player. Soon, he wants to be the first in his family to go to college.
As for those who look up to him? For Lombard, achieving his dreams hasn’t been a product of rocket science, he said, but simply hard work.
“I would just say don’t let perceptions pull you down from anything,” he said. “Keep pushing and grinding. If at first you don’t succeed, keep working at it.”
Contact Chris Kudialis at ckudialis@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4593. Find him on Twitter: @kudialisrj