Despite physical setbacks, Starmont's Daisy playing the game he loves

ARLINGTON — His mom warned you her son probably wasn't going to be real talkative. Jonathan Daisy is like that with people he doesn't know.

'How you doing?' you greet the Starmont senior. He extends his left hand, though immediately gets scolded by his father, Jeff.

'Use your right hand,' Jeff Daisy tells his son.

You ask Jonathan what being part of Starmont's basketball team means to him. You ask him why he likes basketball and sports so much.

You ask him what the best part of basketball is for him. The topic then changes to his favorite team and his favorite player.

After each question, there is a long, sometimes awkward pause. His mother, Sandy, is exactly right about not being comfortable speaking to strangers.

After some prompting from his parents, Jonathan says 'it's real fun' to play basketball at Starmont and shooting is his favorite thing to do. He loves the Iowa Hawkeyes and North Carolina senior guard Marcus Paige, whose mother, Sherryl, is a Starmont graduate.

'What number is Marcus?' Jeff Daisy asked his son.

Jonathan immediately replied correctly: '5.'

Knowing player numbers and other sports-related tidbits have been great learning tools for Jonathan. He has a learning disability, just another thing the 18-year-old senior has had to cope with in life.

He also suffers from epileptic seizures, though medication helps with that. Then there is cerebral palsy.

Sandy and Jeff Daisy first noticed his left eye twitching as a baby and took him to the doctor, where they were given sobering news. Jonathan was legally blind in his left eye and had severe CP on the right side of his body.

'We were told he would never walk, talk or play sports,' Sandy Daisy said. 'And he can do all those things.'

Jonathan has had 12 surgeries in his young life: two on his right arm and 10 on his right leg. He had arm surgery this past summer and a major procedure done on his right leg about a year ago.

Doctors inserted a metal rod to help straighten out the leg, a surgery that took six to eight hours.

'He's got more hardware in him than anyone,' Jeff Daisy said.

'That's basically been Jonathan's life since he was in second or third grade,' Sandy Daisy said.

Yet it hasn't stopped him from wanting to be involved. Jonathan is team manager for the Starmont football team and a member of the track and field team.

But it's basketball he loves the most. A senior, this is his first season on the Stars varsity.

He doesn't play much, only a couple of times so far, but has scored a basket in each of those games. The first one came in early January against Alburnett, which, ironically, is Sandy Daisy's alma mater.

It was a special moment.

'To go through what he has had to go through in his life ... I don't know if I could have done it,' said Starmont's Tyler Boardman. 'Jon is a strong, strong kid. The guys look up to him. We see (the way he deals with his) disability as kind of a strength for our team.'

Boardman is Jonathan's best friend, though Boardman's younger brother, Connor, an eighth-grader, might be a close second. Jonathan always calls the Boardman family to see if Tyler or Connor want to shoot baskets.

Tyler drives Jonathan to and from each practice and game. Though quiet around those he doesn't know, Jonathan is never afraid to talk a little smack to his buddy when they're on the court.

'Oh, if I mess up, he's all over me,' Boardman said. 'Basketball, this team means everything to him. We're really close, basically brothers. We've grown up together, our birthdate is only seven days apart. To see him score for the first time, that gave me goosebumps.'

'We've got a great support system around him,' said Starmont Coach Troy Northrop. 'The kids look after him, the kids take care of him, and he takes care of the kids and supports them. I think the community supports Jonathan a great deal. Everybody loves him, and he cares about us.'

The Daisys said they took the school district to court, in order for him to be allowed to play. They said the school district did not want him to participate in sports, for fear of injury.

Starmont Principal Marc Snaveley said the lawsuit was before his time, and the school could not comment. You notice in pregame warmups, Jonathan stands away from the rest of his teammates and doesn't participate in layup drills and things.

'I think they're afraid that he'll get hurt,' Jeff Daisy. 'But he's a tough kid. If he falls down, he just gets back up.'

'(Snaveley) is probably my best support out here,' Sandy Daisy said. 'He's a family man. I think he cares a lot about the students. It's been a better atmosphere for us since he's been here. We can actually come out here and not feel like everybody hates us.'

Sandy Daisy said there was a misunderstanding in what she and her husband were trying to accomplish with their lawsuit against Starmont. Their three other children (25-year-old daughter Sonni Norberg, 24-year-old daughter Shelby Salow and 22-year-old son Jake Daisy) all were successful athletes at the school.

They said they just wanted Jonathan to have the same opportunity to be part of a team.

'With basketball, he's just one of the guys,' said Northrop. 'He comes to practice, he's one of the guys. He comes into the locker room, he's just one of the guys. He's on the bench supporting his team. That's just what it is. He is a part of something that he cares about. He's part of a program that he cares about. Just being a high-school boy, that's something that is awesome for him.'

'The toughest person I know,' Jake Daisy said in a Facebook post showing he and his brother in a photo post surgery last winter. 'And my hero.'

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