ELON COLLEGE – Elon College basketball player Mary Parker Coleman has battled against the odds most of her young life, so when her knee required reconstructive surgery, she took it in stride.
After all, she hadn’t let a malformed right – the result of a birth defect –stop her from playing basketball or participating in any other activity for that matter. Coleman, then a sophomore, considered her torn knee ligament a minor setback.
Two years and four knee surgeries later, she is finally playing competitive basketball again. “When I got back on the court that was just an awesome feeling,” says the 5’5 guard, who can fire off three-pointers with ease. She holds state records for the most three-pointers made in a game at her high school in Warren County, N.C.
Her determination to play again is reflective of a philosophy that she and her mother developed. They call it the three D’s: dream, do and dare.
“Last spring after the fourth surgery, I was really frustrated and felt like I wasn’t improving,” she says. “But I have never backed down from a challenge. The knee was just another obstacle in my life.”
Coleman says her parents didn’t let the birth defect, which left with a partial thumb and no fingers, limit her childhood activities. She enrolled in ballet and tap classes and learned the game of basketball. “They wanted me to do the same things my sister did to become a well-rounded person,” she says. “I’m not by any means disabled or have a disability. I see me as being normal, but physically different.”
She is quick, however, to acknowledge that physical difference has shaped the person that she is today. “I think that I was born with talents,” she says. “From day one it has been a challenge to do something with those talents.”
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Media note:
Coleman’s last home game is Feb. 20.