Grand Rapids: Girl gets chance to hoop it up before losing leg; 12-year-old Alyssia Cook chose to have left leg amputated

By Tom Rademacher The Grand Rapids Press GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) -- Too many of our dreams are rooted in a desire for wealth or fame. Then there is the dream of Alyssia Crook, a girl who craved to play just one basketball game with her teammates, for her school, in a real uniform. Before the surgeons take her leg. This is the story of a young sprite from Ottawa County's Georgetown Township who made an adult decision on faith -- and it is tied to the kids she hopes to have in another 10 or 12 years. It includes a coach from Hudsonville's Baldwin Middle School who put doing the right thing ahead of winning and a school community sharing what you can't discover in books. Alyssia, 12, was born with defects to her legs that affect her nerves, arteries, veins and cartilage. When her parents, Chad and Karen Crook, adopted her from a Russian orphanage, she was 5 and walked on the balls of her feet. To feel the long, taut braid that runs behind her left knee is to grip a knotty cord. But she was the little girl they chose to adopt, a girl whose eyes Chad saw even before they met. Rounding a corner in the orphanage, he turned to his left, and there in the first crib were the brown eyes he had imagined. The legs didn't matter. "That's her," he turned and said to Karen, and they flew her home. Alyssia has had "dozens of surgeries" in an effort to relieve pain and improve circulation and mobility. For too long, she and her parents have endured trips to specialists in Chicago, where every three months Alyssia would submit to painful straightening of her limbs, followed by trips home in yet another cast. On Feb. 28, Alyssia's parents were told by doctors that they were reduced to two choices: Either shorten Alyssia's legs and live in fear of ever incurring an injury to the limbs, or undergo an amputation of the left leg, which was more severely affected. They went home to cry, deliberate. It was on an impromptu walk that the answer was delivered. Alyssia was humming a song when she says God whispered to her, "You have fought long and hard enough. It's time to let go." She recoiled in wonder and remembers yelling, "What?!" Then she saw a vision of a boy and girl playing soccer, then basketball, then softball, then playing catch with a Frisbee. Eventually, she saw herself in the vision, a young mother with a prosthetic leg, and the kids were her own. She shared the vision with her parents, and they started to speak, but she held her hand out. "This is my body, my leg, my life, and I know God told me it's my decision," she said. "I choose to be a mom that can play with her children." And then the seventh-grader implored her mother to call the doctors and tell them she wouldn't be hobbling around on legs half their size, "because (the doctors are) going to be cutting off my leg." The surgery likely will occur in days or weeks, not months from now. For years, Alyssia had been competing on a Special Olympics girls' basketball team. She qualifies because she has mild cognitive impairment that manifests itself in a learning disability and trouble reading. But her dream, since entering middle school last fall, was to play on the team with her classmates at Baldwin Middle. She tried out but was one of seven girls cut by coach Steve Roth from 20 who tried. She took it like a champ and reinvented herself as a cheerleader and booster for the team. "She kept the scorebook for our away games," Roth said. "I told her, 'Maybe next year. Come out and prove me wrong.'" But then he found out the latest news. And he acted. On March 9, in a game against Rockford, the team exited the locker room with a new player. It was No. 32, Alyssia Crook. Her parents had no idea it was coming and, when the tough little waif with brown eyes streamed out with the others, they wept. She dressed again last week. That time she scored a point. Last Thursday was to be her last game on two legs. She started, had two steals and made a layup for two solid points in the win. The little crowd roared. "What a story," said Baldwin Principal Dave Powers. "I don't know how many of our own kids know what she has going on yet." On Thursday, he read to his staff an update of what Alyssia faced, complete with her version of the vision. "There wasn't a dry eye in the room." Alyssia allowed the tears to flow from her 4-foot-8, 71-pound frame in a hallway after the game. "I wanted to play with the real team," she said. "I wanted to be part of something. And when I grow up, I want to be playing with my kids, not a spectator." Inside the gymnasium at Baldwin Middle, Alyssia's grandfather, Dave Bundick, was pocketing his video camera. Alyssia had asked him to chronicle her last time. "Someday," she told him, "I want to be able to show my kids that I played basketball with both legs." Published: Wed, Mar 23, 2011