She showed up to the first day of volleyball
practice two months later – on a prosthetic leg. “I’m just pretty hard-headed, I guess,” Hem- mann says. “I knew I had to be there for tryouts like everybody else. So I was.”
DAVE MIRLY COACHED GIRLS’ VOLLEY- ball at Perryville High School the past 10 years. He left after last season, moving back to his hometown in nearby Jackson, but he will never forget his last season at Perryville – the season that Dru Hemmann, a 15-year-old back-row sub on the Lady Pirates freshman team, made him reevaluate most of what he thought he knew about recovery, hard work and determination. “Dru has inspired me,” Mirly says, “to be a
better person, a better coach, a better father, a better everything.” Mirly had seen Hemmann stand out at his
volleyball camps and had watched her progress as one of the top young players in the area. And then he watched her show up for the first
practice of the season with an awkward pros- thetic leg and a walker. “I definitely had some concerns about what
level she could get to,” Mirly says. “But vol- leyball here is like a family, and Dru was a part of that. I told her we’d always have a place for her.” Recalls Hemmann: “He just told me to know my limits.” To which Hemmann thought, “Limits?” Hemmann, according to those who watched, seemed to go through those early practices seeing things in a different way than everybody else. She missed all of her serves, falling down on some of the attempts. But she didn’t see these attempts as the failures that others did. She was just on her way to figuring it out. When she needed a walker to get from the middle of the court to the net for a setting drill, she didn’t think of herself as hopeless. And when Mirly set a goal of getting Hemmann into a freshman match by the beginning of October, well . . . she ended up playing in the first home match of the season at the end of August. “The first time she stepped on the court, the whole gym was in tears,” says Chris Baer, who co-coaches Hemmann’s 15-and-Under club team at Perryville Volleyball Club with her husband, Greg.
And her first serve? What else? An ace. Hemmann played in every match as a back-
row sub during the high school season, earning her team’s most improved player award. She con- tinues in her defensive specialist role this year in club. Baer says Hemmann is a very good passer and can hit from the back row but is no longer quick enough to be a full-time player or a setter, nor springy enough to play at the net. “I don’t jump much,” Dru says with dry wit. But that could change, too. This year in club,
she’s playing on a new, springy C-Leg prosthetic that allows her to be more athletic.
After the accident, Dru Hemmann’s determination got her back on her feet quickly.
64"70--&:#"-- 03( c
“She’s kind of hopping,” Baer says. “She’s
getting better with it. She’s learning to trust it more.”
And she still has the ball-handling skills
and the sharp mind that helped make her such a good two-legged player. “In one of her games, the other team kept
serving it to her,” Baer says. “Over and over again, they served to her. And she kept bringing it right back up. She’s a very smart player. She reads the game really well. No question, this is going to hold her back a little, but I don’t think she’s going to let it stop her.”
TRACY HEMMANN, DRU’S MOTHER, wishes she could trade fates with her daughter. “I would gladly be the one with the amputa-
tion and let her lead her very active, happy lifestyle,” she says. The thing is, that’s what Dru has ended up doing anyway – leading her very active, happy lifestyle. She still loves volleyball. “I just love the rush of it,” she says. “It’s just
a great game, the skills and techniques you learn … it’s just amazing all around.” She’s eager to find out how much better she
can get with the new leg. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I guess I’ll have to
figure that out for myself.” For now, she’s not interested in playing
sitting volleyball, a variation of the sport for athletes with amputations and other physi- cal challenges that is played in the Paralympic Games. “Somebody asked me about it, but I’m not
interested in that,” she says. “I just want to play the game I’ve always played.” And she’s grateful at the outpouring of emo-
tional and financial support from her friends and neighbors. “I don’t really like being the center of at-
tention, but it was very amazing to know how many people care,” she says. “It was crazy to think all these people would do this for me.” What’s not so crazy is to imagine Dru Hem-
mann as an inspiration to countless young athletes facing a variety of challenges. “Dru would just like to let any other young
girls out there know that if something like this happens, don’t give up on your dreams,” says her mother. “Work hard and you can accom- plish a lot.” Maybe even wind up in headlines.
PHOTOS: Courtesy of SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital
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