B EYOND THE GAME Standing tall
Missouri high school player Dru Hemmann lost half of her left leg in an ATV accident, but her no-quit spirit and love for the game has her back in the gym and playing ball by David Leon Moore
ABOUT A DECADE AGO, A
little girl in rural southeast Missouri decided she liked being outside and being active more than she liked being inside and watching TV, and from that moment on, it seemed likely that Dru Hemmann’s name would one day end up in headlines. She was good first at gymnastics, then soccer and track and volleyball. By the time she was in eighth grade, she was named Female Athlete of the Year at her middle school, and she had become a terrific, smart, quick 5-foot-3 setter who figured to be in the middle of things for Perryville Volley- ball Club in the Gateway Region and the Perryville High School girls’ volleyball team for the next four years. She started playing club volleyball in December 2012 and had a bright future ahead of her. Then came an off-road outing last
Memorial Day. Hemmann and her mother were riding in a side-by-side ATV that hit some loose gravel on a turn and flipped over and over, finally landing on Hemmann’s left leg, snapping it. Hemmann spent the next month in the hospital. First, doctors tried to save her lower leg. There was too much damage, however, and the leg was amputated below the knee. Problems persisted, and after more than a dozen surgeries, Hemmann lost her knee, too.
And so began “the long road back,” a
story like this one is supposed to say. Except that it wasn’t that long a road. That’s one of the amazing things about the amazing story of Dru Hemmann.
52 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at
usavolleyball.org/mag
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