Off the Bench - Raleigh played in the Kentucky’s State High School Tennis Tournament
last week and looked like the player that vowed to make it back after
disappointment from 2009 tournament. The only difference for the Letcher
Central senior was back in 2009, he had two arms. Now, he’s playing
with one.
Back in 2010, Jacob complained of pain in his left wrist and was taken to a doctor where he found out the dire news:
“It hurt bad,” Jacob says. “It got so bad, I couldn’t even hit.”
Eventually, Rick and Tracy Raleigh took their teenage son to a doctor
in Bristol, Va. A tumor was removed from Jacob’s wrist, and samples
were sent to be evaluated by experts around the country.
At the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, they came back with one of the more
dreadful diagnoses possible: Cancer. Jacob was told he had Epithelioid
Sarcoma, a rare soft-tissue cancer that usually strikes young adults.
“He said it looked like I had a reoccurrence,” Jacob
said. In early October, Jacob went to the hospital prepared to have his
left arm amputated.
Says Rick Raleigh: “When we got there, I told the doctors, ‘Once we
do this, it’s gone. Isn’t there anything we can do (short of cutting off
the arm)?’ ”
Jacob’s left arm was amputated just below the shoulder on Oct. 21, 2010.”I was scared to death,” he says.
So some seven months after he lost his left arm, after he had to relearn his favorite sport right-handed,
Jacob was in Lexington Thursday fulfilling the vow he’d made to
himself as a sophomore.”I’m just excited,” he said before the state
tourney match. “It means everything to me to be back here.”
Well we had the one arm wrestler win a title a couple months back, now we have a one armed tennis player doing work. This dude had to switch playing hands and learn the game all over again. Not to mention learn how to balance his body with one arm and how to hit a one handed back hand. Gotta respect the hell out of this dude and hope he can get a title in the state tournament. Just not sure if I like the wrestler or the tennis player more?
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