HANSEL ENMANUEL Making It Look Easy

THE COLLEGE BASKETBALL SENSATION LOST MOST OF HIS LEFT ARM IN AN ACCIDENT 16 YEARS AGO. NOW HE HAS MILLIONS OF FANS AND NBA DREAMS

- ANNA LAZARUS CAPLAN

Just three days after having surgery on his knee following an injury last November, college basketball player Hansel Enmanuel was back on his feet and running around in his apartment, recalls his coach Corey Gipson, who then holds up his cell phone in a Zoom call with People to show video proof of the 6'6" athlete bounding up a staircase. “Hansel’s turnaround has been faster than anybody I’ve ever coached who had those types of surgeries,” says Gipson, the head coach of Enmanuel’s Austin Peay State University Governors basketball team in Clarksville, Tenn. “It’s remarkable.”

So is the rest of Enmanuel’s story. The 21-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, where he was raised by his grandmother while his mother was living overseas, lost most of his left arm at age 6 when a concrete wall collapsed on him. Nevertheless he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, a professional basketball player in a local league, by learning to dribble, shoot and sink baskets with only one hand.