Doc: No hurdle too high for Delaney
Paul Daugherty , pdaugherty@enquirer.com 3:02 p.m. ET Jan. 21, 2017


The best athlete in the Tristate is 3-foot-7, weighs 42 pounds and has to be in bed by 8:30.

She likes reading about Junie B. Jones, she hates eating Brussels sprouts. Her idols are Gabby Douglas and Simone Biles, which figures because she is a gymnast.

Last year, she was warming up with her team before an exhibition at a Xavier men’s basketball game when her leg flew off.

Excuse me?

A screw on her prosthetic came loose during the middle of a cartwheel. Her body went one way and the leg went the other. Her mom asked if the XU trainer could help them out. The trainer said um, ah, well. . .

“We just need some tape,’’ explained Delaney Dunlap’s mother, Gina.

When the club’s halftime show began, all Gina Dunlap could manage was, “Please don’t fly off, please don’t fly off. If it does, people are going to pass out.’’

Delaney’s aunt Angie, Gina’s sister, had a different take on the proceedings. “Please fly off,’’ she said. “If you’re ever going to make ESPN, this will do it.’’

We learn things when we are lucky enough to have children with disabilities. One is a sense of humor. “What did we not name you?’’ Gina asked her daughter.

“Eileen,’’ Delaney answered.

“Where are you not going to work?’’

“IHOP,’’ Delaney said.

She is 8 now. Last year, Delaney was romping around a playground when another kid noticed Delaney was different. “What’s up with your leg?’’ he asked. He asked several times. Delaney asked her mom what she should do about that. “Show it to him,’’ Gina said.

So she did. She took her leg off in the middle of the playground. “That is so cool,’’ was the boy’s response. Delaney’s classmates at Loveland Primary School refer to her prosthetic as “Delaney’s bionic leg.’’

(Aunt Angie has suggested Delaney tell inquisitors that a shark bit her leg off. Aunt Angie has a different sense of humor.)

The world becomes smaller. We become more tightly bound up as one. No country is an island now. The march toward inclusion and diversity isn’t just some liberal’s pipe dream anymore. It’s reality. Getting along in life is not a solo endeavor. The village is here, and we either join it or get left behind.

Eight years ago, Delaney Dunlap was born without the fibula of her left leg. It just wasn’t there. Fibular hemiphilia is the medical term. At 18 months, a surgeon amputated the leg several inches below the knee. Six months later, Delaney was fitted for her first prosthesis. Not long after that, Gina heard her daughter exclaim “Did it!’’ when she slid the device on by herself for the first time.

Parents take it harder than the kids who are affected. Always. Parents grieve. They mourn the loss of perfect. The kids soldier on. “For me, it was devastating,’’ said Mike Dunlap, Delaney’s dad. “I had no idea how I was going to handle it.’’ His mother was reassuring. “She’s going to be an inspiration,’’ she said.
“I want to do what she wants to do,’’ Mike Dunlap saidBuy Photo


Mike made the turn to full acceptance not long after Delaney was fitted for that first artificial leg. The family was at a local church festival when Delaney decided she’d had enough of the leg for awhile, so she took it off. The prosthesis is cup-shaped at the top, where it slides onto Delaney’s lower leg. It made a perfect holder for Mike’s beer.

“That’s when I knew he was OK,’’ Gina said.

What we do as parents of kids with disabilities is everything. What we learn is to allow our kids to define themselves, same as we would for our “typical’’ children. Mike and Gina would allow their daughter to tell them who she would become.

“I want to do what she wants to do,’’ Mike said.

“We’re not going to limit anything she does,’’ Gina said.

Mike: “If she wants to climb a tree, she’ll climb a tree. She’s learned everything on her own.’’

Gina: “She’s very determined, and she doesn’t want to be average.’’

When Delaney was 4, her parents signed her up for Karol Warden’s gymnastics club. Delaney was flying around the house like a kid who needed a sedative. Or an energy-exhausting hobby. Warden had been teaching gymnastics since 1973, all but the first eight years in Loveland.

And so it began.

“She doesn’t understand that she can’t do something,’’ said Warden. Early on, Warden was teaching Delaney a move called a back walkover. A wedge-shaped mat was used to help her. Delaney would start from the top of the mat and proceed downward, aided by gravity. Except she insisted on doing the move while working her way up the mat.

Another time, Warden explained to Delaney she’d earn a better score if she could hoist her leg higher. Delaney removed her leg and held it up. “Put your leg back on,’’ Warden ordered, then thought to herself, “Who gets to tell somebody to put their leg back on?’’

Delaney now performs the same moves as the rest of the girls in the club: Aerials, walkovers, back handsprings etc. The club performed at Xavier again last Monday, at halftime. Almost no one in the crowd knew of Delaney’s leg. That’s the beauty of what she’s doing.

“Some people don’t understand it. I explain it when they ask,’’ Delaney said, sounding about a mile older than she is. “They say they’re sorry for me. I say, OK.’’

At practice recently, two newcomers to the club asked Warden, “Does she have an artificial leg?’’ As Delaney was going through her routine, the kids had another question: “Does she realize she does?"

She does, and it doesn’t matter to her, or her family or to those who know them, which is just about everyone in Loveland. It’s a close-knit town, stitched together by generations of families who grew up there and haven’t left. The community has thrown its protective arms around the Dunlaps. It’s a reason Gina says they’ll never leave.

People in Loveland don’t look at Delaney. They see her. It’s a difference big enough to fill a compassionate heart.

Said Gina, “If we had a chance for her to get her leg back, I wouldn’t do it. People say she’s so inspirational. I say that’s why she’s here.’’

As for best athlete: Who succeeds when success seems barely a choice? Who overcomes and perseveres? Who sees adversity as an opportunity? Who rejects failure? That’d be the 8-year-old athlete defying gravity. Long odds against you are nothing, when you can fly.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/c.../96888662/