NubAbility proving to be #unstoppABLE

What began as a small camp of 19 families and 7 coaches back in 2012 has now blossomed into the massive celebration that Du Quoin saw over the course of four days from July 16-19.

The 4th Annual NubAbility Athletics All-Sport Summer Camp - deemed #unstoppABLE for 2015 - drew a jaw-dropping 129 limb-different campers, over 80 camper siblings, 44 limb-different coaches, and more than 40 other coaches and volunteers to town for the biggest #dontneed2 event to date.

Organization founder Sam Kuhnert, a limb-different Du Quoin High School grad who pitched for the Indians' baseball team as well as Greenville College and Morthland College, called the event a "huge blessing."

"We had twice as many people attend as we had last year," Kuhnert said. "All the campers sounded satisfied. They're all-in. They all want to come back. They all came up and gave us hugs and said thank you. They said they loved Du Quoin - and they've even learned how to say it right."

Kuhnert says added sponsors, such as partnerships with Major League Baseball's Minnesota Twins and St. Louis Cardinals, have allowed the annual camp to grow exponentially.

"We added a lot of new coaches, a lot of new faces," Kuhnert said. "We had a whole lot more sponsors and a whole lot more behind us, more people coming out to help."

Things kicked off on Thursday with "Outdoors Day," which featured a shooting demonstration by 20-year old Hunter Cayll, aka "Nubs the No-Handed Shooter," from Lawrenceburg, TN - a first for NubAbility along with new sports swimming, archery and fishing. Cayll is a professional three-gun shooter who has swiftly climbed the rankings since picking up his first semi-automatic weapon less than a year ago.

Cayll came to NubAbility after Sam's mother, NubAbility Event Director and "Team Mom," Jana Kaye Kuhnert, saw one of his videos online and reached out. Before a trip to Italy this September for a world championship shotgun match, "Nubs" showcased his abilities for about two hundred onlookers at MorMad shooting range before spending the rest of the camp coaching basketball.

"All these kids are just a huge inspiration," Cayll said. "I tried letting some of them beat me playing basketball, and then they really did beat me. My pride got involved and I started really trying, and they still beat me. My pride may be hurt a little bit, but this camp is still an awesome experience, I'll definitely be back next year and the years to come. There is so much interaction with everybody. I'm really glad there's something like this to show the kids that they're not alone and they can achieve anything they want as long as they put their head to it. Nothing's impossible."

Harry Williams, a wrestling and mixed martial arts coach from Manchester, England, became NubAbility's first international instructor. Williams grew up a fan of pro wrestling, but says initially his father was strongly against him participating in the world of professional fighting.

"I was stoked when I found out (former World Wrestling Entertainment personality) Zac Gowen was here," Williams said. "I remember watching him wrestle as a kid."

"My dad owns a mixed martial arts gym, and my brother used to compete before he became a police officer. I always wanted to do wrestling or jujitsu, but my dad always felt it would be on his conscience if I was to get injured. When I was fifteen, I sat down with him on New Year's Day and said I want to give it a go. He was still touchy about it, really nervous for me, but he said 'ok, we'll give it a week.' That week became a month, and eventually that became the past five years."

Williams is no longer able to compete - but it isn't because of his missing radius bone in his right forearm, or because he was born five weeks prematurely and spent the first two weeks of his life in an incubator.

"It's my neck," Williams said. "I found out about it when I started doing pro wrestling, I have a rare disease called Klippel-Feil syndrome. It's basically a shortness of the neck in the back, I have quite a short neck. If I took a big enough bump and my head hit off the mat, it would paralyze me from the neck down."

"I started doing refereeing, but seeing people the same age as me come in and wrestle, it kind of tore my heart to pieces. Even coaching I still get a sore neck occasionally, after all the tugging on my neck I get sore at night, but the next day I'm fine."

Williams first became involved with limb-different organizations through the Lucky Fin Project, another non-profit organization that raises awareness for individuals born with symbrachydactyly or other limb differences. He eventually became friends on Facebook with another NubAbility wrestling and MMA coach, Nick Palmer, who exposed him to the Du Quoin-based foundation with a post he shared back in January of 2014.

After the funds just weren't there to bring Williams to town for last summer's camp, he was excited to be here this past week, and says no matter what it takes, he'll be back again in 2016.

"In England, we don't really have anything like this," he said. "It's amazing, I never really dreamed of anything like this before. Being in the gym and seeing a kid with just two fingers and no legs taking people down, pushing them out of the circle, taking on everyone, even calling out me. I said 'this kid has got it.' Another kid came up to me with the most innocent sentence I've heard - he came over, tapped me and said 'sir, can you teach me how to wrestle? It was something only a child would say."

Former fitness competitor Barbie Thomas also had one particular experience at camp that tugged at her heart.

"I got to teach Zoe, a girl with no arms, to tie her shoes this year," Thomas said, "and she did it several times. That's probably the highlight of my trip, seeing Zoe tie her shoes with her toes, just like me."

Thomas lost both of her arms in an electrical accident when she was two and a half years old. Doctors said she wouldn't live, and if she did, she'd be a vegetable the rest of her life. But here she was last week, coaching in Du Quoin, sharing her story and teaching kids like herself how to persevere.

"My parents were wondering how I was going to function in life without arms," said Thomas. "They figured that one out when they came into the hospital room and I put my legs out to give them a hug."

Thomas has been overcoming struggles her entire life, including when she had to explain to the chairperson of the National Physique Committee that she wanted to compete, but didn't have arms.

"In my industry, when you say someone 'doesn't have arms,' usually it means their arms are small or weak," she said. "I repeated myself several times before I finally had to get technical and say 'I'm a bilateral amputee, I do not have arms, they are not there. It's not that they're weak - they're nonexistent.' You could almost hear his jaw drop."

Jen Bricker is an aerialist in the opposite situation - she was born without legs. Still, Bricker participated in several sports growing up, including power tumbling, competing against able-bodied athletes.

"My parents set no limits for me," said Bricker. "I could always do anything I wanted. There was no 'can't,' there was no ceiling on my dreams. They adopted me and they were the absolute, 100% perfect, meant-to-be parents for my life."

She has always a big fan of gymnastics, and in particular, a member of the 1996 Team USA Olympic Gold Medal team, Dominique Moceanu. Little did she know at that time what the future - and the past - held in terms of her relationship with Moceanu.

"I was a fan of her most of my life, ever since I can remember," Bricker said, "and then I found out she was my full-blooded biological sister right before I turned 16 years old. I spent 4 years trying to contact her and my younger sister (Christina) before we finally met for the first time in May of 2008."

Moceanu detailed the relationship in her memoir "Off Balance," and it wasn't long before her and Bricker's story made national headlines. Bricker has spent the last several years performing as a professional acrobat and aerialist, and appearing as a public speaker. She's also writing a book due out next year.

Bricker grew up in Oblong, Ill., just 135 miles away from Du Quoin, where she's spent time the last two summers at NubAbility Camp.

"I'm amazed by how people are coming from so many different places around the country, around the world, to a small town in southern Illinois which is close to my heart because I grew up in Oblong," she said. "I'm an athlete, so being at a camp where it's all focused around being an athlete is pretty awesome."

Another athlete-coach without legs, "Big" Nick Stilwell, made his first trip to a NubAbility Summer Camp this year. But Stilwell, who focused on coaching baseball, has plenty of experience helping out limb-different children, as he and fellow NubAbility coach Regas Woods (track) started the Never Say Never Foundation about six years ago following a car accident that claimed both of Stilwell's legs at the age of 25.

"We focus on a lot of the same things as NubAbility," said Stilwell. "We want to empower the kids, we want to give them the confidence, but we also know the importance of having the proper prosthetics and equipment to be able to get out there and thrive. One of our main focuses is raising money to buy running legs or equipment for the kids that can't afford it, anything that gets them out there and gets them active. It's a breath of fresh air to see that there are other foundations out there that have some of the same morals and standards, and aren't exploiting the kids, they're really just wanting to help them."

Stilwell has coached at two baseball camps put on by NubAbility in the past eight months, but says both paled in comparison to the numbers drawn at the All-Sport Camp, and that his first impression was, simply, "wow."

"It's a lot to take in," Stilwell continued. "Sam and Jana do such a great job, they help out so many people and have such big hearts. It's a huge family, that's what it is. I'm looking forward to coming back every year and just making it better and better. Just being able to get back out and play recreationally and teach these kids the stuff that helped me when I was younger, it feels so much better to give back."

A car accident of sorts also claimed one of soccer coach Bree McMahon's legs. When she was 17, McMahon was working a car wash to raise funds for her club soccer team when her friend's foot slipped off the brake pedal of one of the vehicles, pinning her against a brick wall. The incident broke McMahon's right femur and crushed all the arteries and veins in her left leg, resulting in an amputation above the knee and months upon months of rehabilitation.

"I was captain of my high school soccer team," said McMahon. "I had two or three college offers. I was going somewhere, I was pretty excited, and then my world flipped upside down."

Despite all of that, Brevard College (N.C.) coach Shigeyoshi Shinohara still offered McMahon a scholarship. She wound up playing three of the five years she was on the team, becoming a goal keeper after beginning her career as a field player. Not only that, but McMahon also became a world-class Paralympic shot-putter, and still holds the United States record in the event for the T-42 classification.

Now an assistant soccer coach at Mars Hill University (N.C.), and the head coach of both the men's and women's teams at Carolina Day School in Nashville, N.C., McMahon has seen NubAbility's numbers explode over the past three years she's been at the All-Sport Summer Camp.

"It's definitely bloomed," she said. "This year it's insane with how many kids we have, and where all they've come from. It's really a blessing to be part of NubAbility. I love the feeling of teaching a kid how to kick a soccer ball just right, and being able to cut it with their prosthetic, or being able to shoot and balance with their prosthetic. Everybody wants to be here, nobody takes it for granted."

These amazing "#dontneed2" stories - and the hundreds more that could fill dozens of newspaper pages - are just some of the reasons why NubAbility Athletics has blown up from a handful of individuals hoping to make a difference in the lives of a handful of kids, to hundreds of individuals changing the lives of hundreds of kids all over the globe.

More than $4,000 was raised in the camp's silent auction, and final figures from the FUNdraising 5K on Saturday are yet to be determined. The not-for-profit organization is always looking to add to their growing list of sponsors, volunteers, and supporters. To find out more about the NubAbility Athletics Foundation, visit NubAbility.org or find their page on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NubAbility.

To learn more about the NubAbility coaches featured in this article, visit nohandedshooter.com (Hunter Cayll), fitnessunarmed.com (Barbie Thomas), jenbricker.com (Jen Bricker), and neversayneverfoundation.org (Nick Stilwell). Find Harry Williams on instagram @harrywilliamsmma. Find Bree McMahon on Facebook with the Bree McMahon athlete page.

-Sports Editor Doug Daniels can be reached at ddaniels@duquoin.com - Follow him on twitter at: @DQCallSports