Phoenixville’s Simons Doesn’t Need a Hand
Ben Simons, born without a left hand and forearm, scored his first goal on Friday for the PAHS lacrosse team.
When we use the expression “overcoming the odds” in a sporting context, we usually do so pretty loosely. It’s shorthand for “things didn’t go absolutely swimmingly from the very beginning, but they persevered,” and not a great deal more. What we mean, more often than not, is that the player in question got bad grades, or had a stormy relationship with their coach, or experienced, at a sensitive age, some harrowing but conventional domestic turmoil that they succeeded in spite of. What we usually don't mean, when we say a player “overcame the odds,” is that the odds they overcame were the absence of appendages that are biomechanically necessary to play the sport they’re playing. But, well, here goes: Phoenixville High School senior Ben …
