Jamie Mottram's Sports Blog - www.misterirrelevant.com

Normally I find stuff for posting on my favorite sports blogs, buried on the major sports sites or hidden in the back pages of my local paper, but this one comes straight from the AOL Welcome Screen... An autistic high school senior scored 20 points in the last four minutes of his school's final home game. The story is every bit as amazing as it sounds and the accompanying video is breathtaking too. The crowd reaction each time he hits a shot gives me the sports tingles every single time. Here's what 17 year-old Jason McElwain had to say afterward:

"I ended my career on the right note. I was really hotter than a pistol!"

The kid is normally the manager of the team but the coach gave him a chance to play since it was their last home game and they were up big. McElwain, who's 5'6", hoisted his first three and missed it by six feet. Then he blew a layup before making six of his next nine threes and being carried around the court by a crowd of his peers chanting "J-MAC!" and holding up signs with his face on them. I'm not sure how you top a story like this.

 J-Mac, held high, waits for his movie money

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• #1 Comment from monponsett 
  2/25/06 12:01 AM | Permalink

  I had an autistic kid on a team I coached once, and a bench-clearer forced me to play him one game. We ended up losing by a lot, but we ended up with the ball out of bounds with like 3 seconds left.
  
  I stuck everyone down at the wrong end of the court... except for Jonathan, who I put right under the actual basket we planned to shoot at. It fooled everyone, although Johnathan sort of wandered out towards three point land while we were inbounding the ball.
  
  Johnathan wasn't capable of dribbling (except with food), and he had little concept of what a "good" and "long" shot were. When he caught the ball, he spun and banged in a 25 footer.
  
  We lost by about 50 points, but we pulled off a classic shot. The kids swarmed Johnathan, and they carried him into Burger King after the game. Feeding 12 kids cost me $70, but it was worth it to see Johnathan wearing one of those silly paper crowns and acting like the cat who got the cream for once in his god-damned autistic life.
  
  Two other funny things about Johnathan. Once, when our science class was dissecting a shark, Johnathan took the lungs back to his group home. I didn't notice until his program called, asking me why Johnathan had lungs in a pickle jar over his bed. They thought he had murdered a baby.
  
  The next year, in art class, he made a pretty cool African tribal mask... which he then wore- all day- for like 4 months. This included our field trips and road games. My boss overruled me when I suggested buying it- I even had a fake museum curator routine worked out- though he eventually gave it up, just like she said he would.
  
  The students used to fear him, in a way that people fear crazy folk... "Aw, sh**... Johnathan's gonna burn his program down."