Soldier who lost leg works as US Open ballperson

NEW YORK (AP) — The red, white and blue sticker that U.S. Open ballper­son Ryan McIn­tosh wears on his carbon-fiber pros­thetic right leg packs a mean­ing­ful mes­sage: “Free­dom is not free, but it’s worth fight­ing for.”

Yet if the time he spends chas­ing ten­nis balls and hand­ing water and tow­els to the world’s best play­ers goes the way he hopes, hardly any­one will notice it.

An Army spe­cial­ist who lost his leg when he stepped on a land mine in Afghanistan two years ago, McIn­tosh is spend­ing the end of his sum­mer work­ing for $7.75 an hour at Flush­ing Meadows.

His goal: Try­ing to be help­ful and invis­i­ble at the same time, an inspi­ra­tion to peo­ple like him­self but not a dis­trac­tion to those he’s work­ing for.

“I’m just a ballper­son when I’m here,” McIn­tosh, a 23-year-old from San Anto­nio, said Wednesday.

“It’s the same when I’m in the Army. I’m just a spe­cial­ist. I’m not any­thing spe­cial. I don’t con­sider myself a wounded war­rior. When I have my uni­form on, you can­not tell. And that’s kind of my biggest goal here, too.”

That the Par­a­lympic Games opened in Lon­don on Wednes­day was not lost on McIn­tosh, who paid lit­tle atten­tion to Oscar Pis­to­rius before his injury but is now more in touch with the “Blade Runner’s” role in inspir­ing amputees to com­pete in both able-bodied and par­a­lympic sports.

Pis­to­rius, who made his Lon­don Olympic debut in the 400 meters, was born with­out fibu­las and his legs were ampu­tated below the knee before he was a year old. McIn­tosh was walk­ing sin­gle file through a river val­ley near Kan­da­har with his pla­toon in Decem­ber 2010 when he stepped on a pressure-plate land mine. It det­o­nated and cat­a­pulted him 10 feet in the air. About a half-hour later, he was in surgery. His leg was ampu­tated mid-shin.

Work­ing a match on Court 4, McIn­tosh hus­tled to every ball, antic­i­pated when the play­ers would need their tow­els and tossed with a nice, low ball flight that one of his team­mates on the crew, Jerry Loughran, said “would work per­fect” in Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“They asked me, ‘Can you throw a ten­nis ball?’” McIn­tosh said. “I said, ‘I’ve thrown grenades, so I think I can han­dle a ten­nis ball.’”

The idea that he might become a ballper­son sur­faced ear­lier this year in Col­orado Springs, Colo., where McIn­tosh, a promis­ing sprinter in high school, com­peted in the War­rior Games — an Olympic-style sports fes­ti­val for wounded military.

He tried out along with about 600 peo­ple and made the cut. He’s been work­ing side courts so far in the tour­na­ment, with one brief stint in Louis Arm­strong Sta­dium for Amer­i­can James Blake’s match.

“I don’t want to be cal­lous, but leg or no leg, they have to be at the same level of capac­ity,” said McIntosh’s U.S. Open super­vi­sor, Tina Taps. “He shines out there. And with his mil­i­tary back­ground and sense of team­work, he per­son­i­fies what we want to do with these kids.”

If he’s get­ting noticed on the courts, it’s only in a pos­i­tive way.

“I had some ten­sion at the begin­ning of the match, but then I saw him and I thought, ‘OK, you’re fine. Life is good,’” said Pauline Par­men­tier of France, who defeated No. 25 Yan­ina Wick­mayer on Court 4. “He was good at his job, very good.”

McIn­tosh isn’t the only amputee work­ing as a ballper­son at Flush­ing Meadows.

Denise Castelli, 26, of Net­cong, N.J., worked last year’s U.S. Open and is back again.

McIn­tosh is part of the U.S. Ten­nis Association’s effort to reach out to mil­i­tary mem­bers and intro­duce them to phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal ben­e­fits of tennis.

Next Mon­day is Mil­i­tary Day at the U.S. Open and McIn­tosh will work in Arthur Ashe Sta­dium, where there will be wounded sol­diers watch­ing from the suites.

“My big pic­ture is just to honor those guys who have been injured just like I was and say, ‘You guys can still do any­thing you want,’ “ McIn­tosh said.

His acci­dent occurred four months and three days before his son, Kaden, was born. McIn­tosh said he was in a hurry to start walk­ing, then run­ning again so he could be up to full speed before the baby had a chance to note there was any­thing “dif­fer­ent” about Dad.

“When I was grow­ing up, my dad was always my coach, always right by my side. That’s what I want to do with my son,” McIn­tosh said.

He cur­rently works as the adap­tive sports coor­di­na­tor in the Army, help­ing wounded sol­diers get back into sports while they recover from their injuries.

If things work out, McIn­tosh wants to take a break from that job and start train­ing seri­ously for the 2016 Paralympics.

A major step will come next year at the War­rior Games, where, if he per­forms well enough, he could get finan­cial help for his training.

For now, though, his focus is at Flush­ing Mead­ows. And though ten­nis had never been his thing before this year, the idea of help­ing oth­ers while chal­leng­ing him­self is a nat­ural fit.

“It does coin­cide, because that’s who I am,” he said. “If you need any­thing out of me, I’m going to do it, no mat­ter what.”

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Aug 31 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.