He’s is a total inspiration because his heart is so big. It has nothing to do with his arms. The kid has a heart as big as this building, and everything he does, he puts that much effort into it. I know he doesn’t appreciate it, but he inspires all of us. – Emery wrestling coach Kirk Christiansen
FERRON, Emery County — With the theme music from “Chariots of Fire” playing in the background, Nathan Urie put on a little demonstration that he hoped would convince his classmates to elect him as a student body officer.
But what students packed into that elementary school auditorium saw a few years ago was much more than a sixth-grader who had come up with a clever pun to announce his candidacy.
As he changed from school clothes to running clothes so he could jog around the room to announce he was “running for office,” they saw a young man who didn’t realize the rest of the world might see him as unable.
They saw a child who viewed roadblocks as detours.
They saw a boy for whom life’s smallest and most mundane tasks were simply puzzles he was determined to solve.
All Nathan did to move that audience to tears was tie his shoes.
“I didn’t think anything of it because I’ve seen him do it a million times,” Tracie Urie said of her 16-year-old son who was born without most of his left arm. “We had teachers calling us saying, ‘We’ve never seen anything like that. Everybody in the stands was bawling.'”
Nathan isn’t comfortable with being labeled an inspiration. Maybe it’s because he’s been fighting the stigma that always accompanies labels all his life — special needs, disabled, handicapped. Maybe it’s the pressure of trying to live up to the expectations of other people. And maybe it’s just simply that he wants to do what he’s never been able to do, and that’s to simply go unnoticed.
“He doesn’t want to be different,” his mother said. “He wants to be just like everyone else.”
“But he’s not," his father, Wayne Urie, quickly adds. "And he can’t change that. People say, ‘He inspires me.’ He makes it so nobody should feel like they can’t do anything.”
'Normal for me'
Wayne Urie said he had a feeling that all was not well with his sixth child even before he was born.
“I felt like something was going to be different, wrong, something,” said the father of seven. “I knew beforehand. I didn’t share it with (my wife). It scared me because I didn’t know. I feel like it was inspiration, maybe so I was ready for it.”
When the doctor told the Uries, “He doesn’t have an arm,” Tracie Urie was surprised, but her husband was not.
“It was a confirmation for me,” he said. “Now I know why I had that feeling.” Nurses took Nathan away to do routine tests that hospitals always do on newborns, and that’s when fear first crept into Tracie Urie’s heart.
“I laid there and worried,” she recalled with a little laugh. “I thought, ‘He’ll never play piano, he’ll never do this, he’ll never do that.’ Well, I just had this feeling like, ‘No, it’s OK.’ I just needed to see him to know he’s OK.”
A friend’s advice, she said, turned out to be the best she received in those early days.
“She said, ‘Just enjoy your baby.’ … That was good advice.”
“And that’s basically what we did,” her husband added.
The sixth of seven children, Nathan was just another child in a busy, active household.
“Most people come to this Earth with a disability,” Wayne Urie said. “Maybe you can’t see it. … But you can see his.”
The fact that people can see that Nathan is missing most of his left arm makes for some interesting conversations, especially when he’s preparing to wrestle for Emery High School.
“We see that look a lot,” said Spartan wrestling coach Kirk Christiansen. “They’ll go out (on the mat) with almost empathy or sympathy in their mind, and then after that first period that empathy changes to a look in the corner at the coach of, ‘I can’t! I don’t know!’
"After the match it’s a look of total respect, and often times total defeat because he comes out there to wrestle.”
Nathan said he’s had days where he was discouraged and wondered whether all the work was worth it.
“Sometimes I think, 'Is it worth it? Would anyone care if I quit?'” Nathan said as he prepared to wrestle a teammate for the week’s varsity spot at 132 pounds. “I’ve already accomplished a lot. But it’s never enough. Every next day I wake up and want to do it again. … It’s been normal for me, since I was born without it. I’m just like the other kids on the playground. I’ve been running with them all my life and just haven’t slowed down.”
Never underestimate
Tracie Urie said her son’s first reassurances came early and without words.
“At two weeks, I was looking at him and his eyes bored through me, and the look was like, ‘Mom, it’s OK.’ And that’s the way he’s been all along.”
That does not mean allowing her son to do everything her other children did was always easy. She’s had to learn, mostly from Nathan’s admonishments, to stand back and let him try.
“When he was learning to ride a bike, he came in and said, ‘Mom, I can ride a bike!’” Tracie said. “So I go out there and I’m holding onto the back of the bike, and Nathan said, ‘Mom! If you don’t let go, I will never learn to ride a bike!’ And he got on, rode up the street and back.”
Wayne Urie interrupts the laughter that follows his wife’s story.
“Then he’d come down without any hands, and you should have seen her freak then,” he laughed. “I thought it was cool.”
When the family moved from Payson to Ferron, Nathan immediately became friends with McKoy Christiansen.
“I’ve teased them about being twin brothers from different mothers,” said Christiansen, who is also McKoy's dad. “They do everything together.”
Nathan grew up playing the sports his siblings enjoyed, including soccer and baseball. But he soon began gravitating to the sports that McKoy enjoyed — wrestling and rodeo. Christiansen said they never considered treating Nathan any differently than they treat McKoy.
“He doesn’t like it any different,” Christiansen said. “In fact, we probably make him go a little bit the other way. We throw too many one-armed jokes at him.”
The reality is that many of the wrestling techniques Christiansen teaches the boys have to be adapted for Nathan.
“You throw an exercise out there that he’s challenged at, and he’ll just find a way to get it done,” the coach said. “He doesn’t want to get left behind, and he doesn’t want to be treated any differently. … He’s as competitive as anyone here. When he runs into a roadblock or meets a competitor who has his number … he doesn’t go in that self-pity mode that most of us have. He just keeps his nose to the grindstone and battles through.
"He keeps a lid on that frustration, and he turns that frustration into work ethic. And that’s what makes him good at what he does.”
Being creative
Whether it’s wrestling holds or bow hunting, Nathan decided long ago that rather than give up on something he wants to try, he’ll be creative.
When he was a baby he couldn’t crawl, so he invented his own sort of seated-scoot move that allowed him to move around the house without the aid of his parents or siblings.
“Shooting a bow has been tough for him, but he figured out he can sit on his butt, put his feet up and shoot a bow,” his father said.
Nathan carries toast under his chin, cradles kittens the same way, and refuses to ask for help unless it’s absolutely necessary. And, he said, sometimes it is necessary.
He’s roped since he was a small boy, but he really wanted to compete in team roping with his friends. So he asked the doctors at Shriner’s Hospital whether they could help him come up with a prosthetic arm that would allow him try.
“It’s quite the contraption,” Nathan said, grinning. “I helped them sort of know what I wanted, and they helped me figure out how it could work. (The doctor) said he’d never done anything like that.”
The teenager holds his reins with his prosthetic arm (which has a quick release if he gets in trouble), and he ropes with his right hand. High school rodeo officials have given him permission to tie his rope to his saddle horn once he makes a catch — a move usually reserved only for those cowboys 50 and older. He’s also planning to compete in saddle broncs, and he said there is always a cowboy willing to help him cinch his saddle or hold his rope.
He knows the sports he’s chosen are “a little bit more extreme” but says he likes individual sports best.
“I love the adrenaline,” he admitted. “I choose individual sports because I don’t want to have to depend on anyone or have someone to blame for something I’ve done. In wrestling and rodeo, it’s just you.”
That’s not to say Nathan doesn’t acknowledge, and feel immense gratitude, for all of those who take the time to help him find ways to pursue any and all of his dreams.
Christiansen is one of those who’s gone out of his way to find ways for Nathan to have any opportunity he wants to pursue.
“I would tie my arm down and have my son wrestle me and come up with inventive stuff that he could do,” Christiansen said. “Some of the leg cradles and the leg rides that we use anyway fall right into what he does. … But what you had to do was figure out the balance points are a lot different. Spent some time playing that game, helping him figure it out, but it’s been good for all of us.”
Christiansen said Nathan met a coach named John Webb when he was in junior high school who gave him some advice that helped him find success on that mat in ways he'd never had before.
“He (told him), ‘Don’t wrestle like you have one arm,’” Christiansen recalled. “'You have two arms, a long one and a short one. And wrestle like it.' Ever since then, he’s just attacked this sport. He goes out there for a win every time.”
In addition to Nathan’s creativity and determination, those who know him best say the other secret to his success is his work ethic.
Wayne Urie said he and one of Nathan’s former Scout leaders were once at a camp discussing an upcoming swimming requirement.
“The Scout leader said, ‘I know Nathan will do it. He’ll just put in the extra effort and he’ll do it,’” he said. “A light went on. Why didn’t I ever (realize) that?”
All heart
It’s what he has, not what he lacks, that is inspiring.
Nathan lost his wrestle-off with freshman Newt Oveson Wednesday, which means he’ll be wrestling in the junior varsity spot Friday and Saturday. He’s disappointed because his goal is as clear as it is lofty — win a state championship.
Newt said he and Nathan have wrestled five times this season, and he understands the trepidation that some might feel facing his teammate on the mat.
“The first couple times he beat me, but I learned how to counter how he uses his stub,” he said.
He admits it felt “weird” to wrestle him at first. Moves he could use on other teammates didn’t work on Nathan, and he had to be as creative and persistent as Nathan.
“I think it’s sweet how he wrestles with only one arm,” Newt said.
Adds sophomore teammate Tel Gardner, “He uses that stump as a weapon.”
Christiansen points out that Nathan trailed Newt 6-0 before scoring three points. He was on the verge of tying the match when he ran out of time.
This year he was 16-8 before a junior varsity match at Duchesne High Thursday night. His record is a mix of varsity and JV matches, with an 8-0 record in his last JV tournament. At that competition, he pinned seven of the eight athletes he faced.
“At the end of the tournament, it’s not just our team who gathers around to watch this boy wrestle,” Christiansen said.
“The whole place will come gather around, watch him wrestle and they’ll cheer for him when he scores points. The kid has heart and he touches lives. Maybe he doesn’t want that burden, but he has it anyway. And he does a good job. He’s very humble … just takes things in stride. He’s just a good kid.”
And ultimately, Christiansen said it really isn’t the fact that he can do so much with one less limb than most people that inspires those who take the time to get to know him.
“He’s is a total inspiration because his heart is so big,” the coach said, pointing to the goosebumps on his arms. "It has nothing to do with his arms. The kid has a heart as big as this building, and everything he does, he puts that much effort into it.
"I know he doesn’t appreciate it, but he inspires all of us.”
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