Cheerleader with “Zebra Leg” Inspires, Drives Arkansas Nuts!

Here's one of those "if she can do it, everyone can" stories. Patience Beard was like any other pretty blonde fit woman trying out for the Arkansas Razorback football cheerleading team. Except for one difference. She has a prosthetic leg. And it's got a zebra print on it. Oh, and she's also really good. Not just really good. But REALLY really good.

The inspirational story of "The girl with the 'zebra leg' wows Hog country" is on Yahoo, and it tells all the usual things you would expect an inspirational story to have. The childhood illness. The staring and the ridicule. But this story has something else. Not only has Patience survived in an athletic culture with a disability, she has thrived. From the Yahoo story...

"Over time, Patience became a little bit of a show-off. Not in an obnoxious or arrogant way, but in a proud way. Instead of hiding her disability – and that term should be used quite loosely here – she was happy to draw attention to what she could do...In ninth grade, a time when girls are at their most self-conscious, Patience asked her doctors at the Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas to outfit her prosthetic leg with a zebra pattern. She kept thinking of new designs, the way most of us look for sleeves for our iPhones. One of her favorites is an M&Ms skin. She also had an American flag skin around the time of 9/11. Patience would win over her high school classmates so much that they named her homecoming queen."

You go Zebra Leg girl...you go.