HAMPTON ROADS — When Terri Graham was pregnant with her son, all sonograms pointed to a healthy baby boy.
“I had him when I was 46, so I was very high risk. They took ultrasounds all the time and it always looked like Graham had his fist in his mouth,” Terri explained.
But when that little boy was born, Terri found out that his right arm had never developed.
Without his right arm, Graham Wallace had to learn to do things differently from other kids his age. From learning how to crawl as a baby to playing sports, nothing came easily.
Then, Terri found Camp NubAbility.
“I had a few friends and doctors reach out about Camp NubAbility. I took him for the first time when he was six or seven. We were nervous about what was going to happen, but there were over 200 kids there from around the world. The instructors had one arm, one leg, I even have photos of Graham playing basketball with a kid with no legs. It was like we had opened the door to a whole new world,” Terri recalls.
After dealing with bullying from his classmates, Terri enrolled Graham at Hampton Roads Academy. When a friend of Wallace’s decided to try out for the lacrosse team, he decided he would try out, too.
“My friend Chase, he was the one who actually introduced me to the sport. He’s been playing it basically his whole life. His brother played at HRA as well. One day, the season was about to start and he was just trying to get people to join the team since it’s so small. He was just trying to recruit people and when he talked to me about it, I had no idea about the sport. He sat down with me and taught me all about the rules and I decided to try out even though I didn’t know if it would be possible for me to play,” Wallace said.
After making the team, Wallace worked extra hard on the skills and took to the lacrosse field this spring.
“I’ve never touched a lacrosse stick in my life. I started to realize how I would be able to play the sport and after a while, I had kind of figured out how I was going to play and I knew that all it took was just time. I stuck with it and kept playing until I got better,” Wallace said.
Trevor Topping, head coach of Hampton Roads Academy lacrosse, wasn’t sure where he could use Wallace on the field, but after seeing the determination in his eyes to play, Topping found a place for him.
Wallace recently completed a hat-trick game and has become a fixture on the team.
“Adapting sports to him is something that Graham doesn’t know any differently,” Terri said. “He started getting really confident on the field and I never in a million years thought I’d see my son play lacrosse. All he did his entire youth was soccer.”
As news of Wallace’s success on the field spread, the spectator crowd at Hampton Roads Academy lacrosse home games grew larger and larger. Wallace has been taking the notoriety in stride.
“Never give up. I know that is kind of a universal phrase but it’s really honestly the truest thing you can do. Throughout my whole career in lacrosse, I was probably the worst person on the team for a whole season and a half. I never gave up, I kept working and working and practicing until I finally understood how to play. Just like I’ve done with everything in my life, you have to keep working at it until you get it. If you don’t, you might get lucky once or twice and get something on the first try, but that’s not how things come in life,” Wallace said.
As Wallace enters his final years at Hampton Roads Academy, he has set his sights on earning a college scholarship to play lacrosse at the next level.