Beating the odds — Despite disability, Crum continues to prove he belongs

"Pretty much every coach I had tried to discourage me," he says. "It always takes a while to prove myself."

Raised in the small New Mexico town of Kirtland, Crum grew up in a family of athletes. His father, Richard, was a multi-sport prep star, and all six of his children were good prep athletes.

Richard refused to buy Velcro-strapped sneakers for his son, telling him he couldn't start school until he could tie his shoes. Crum practiced for hours one day until he came up with a method for tying the laces with one hand.

"Everything takes awhile to figure out, like buttoning up shirts, little things like that," he says.

Sports were no different. In baseball, he figured out a method for catching and throwing the ball. He caught the ball with the glove on his left hand, tossed the ball in the air, removed the glove by tucking it under his right arm, caught the ball with his left hand and threw it, all in one swift motion.

He participated in four sports at Kirtland Central High — basketball, track, soccer and baseball. He and Richard, who became a high school teacher and assistant basketball coach so he could help his son, worked year-round practicing whatever sport was in season at the time. In the winter, they practiced basketball in school and church gyms at all hours. In the spring, they arose at dawn to practice the high hurdles, and in the afternoon Crum went to baseball practice.

Crum played on three state championship basketball teams and was named first-team all-state as a senior. He accepted a soccer scholarship to Arizona Western College, but while he was there he walked on and made the basketball team, breaking into the starting lineup as a sophomore. He averaged about seven points a game and became such a defensive force that he was nicknamed "The Pest." When he swatted the ball away from an opponent with his right "hand," teammates said he was "daxed."

Crum turned down two Division I scholarship offers to play soccer at Cal-Irvine and Dayton so he could play basketball at SUU as a walk-on. "It's been tough finding teams that will take one-handed players," he says. Soccer would seem to be a natural for someone with his handicap, but basketball was his first love (he plays soccer for a club team in Cedar City), and he pursued it even though it meant sacrifices.