2 BELIEVE YOU CAN

Dumb Kids Can't Jump
"Too dumb. You'll never graduate from high school," his elementary school teacher told seven-year-old Adam Zimmerman. Sure enough, he "failed" and was held back a grade. Being left behind by friends made him feel like "trash." But his teacher's cutting comment changed his life. It transformed a kid with dyslexia into a person driven to succeed. "Just because one person says something, don't take their word," his mother told him. "Go out and prove them wrong. It's not about the disability; it's what you do about it." Zimmerman did graduate from high school, and at 5'7" he excelled in two sports he was considered too small for: basketball and volleyball. He was MVP and All Conference in both.

That still wasn't enough to earn him a big-time college scholarship. So he went to a Division II school and worked on his game. And though a coach told him he'd never be a Division I basketball player, in his sophomore year he transferred to Marshall University in West Virginia, a Division I school. And he practiced and practiced. The following year he made the team as a walk-on player. This May, the dumb kid who was too short graduated with a degree in sports management and marketing.

When he thinks back to that grade school teacher, he says, "I thank her for saying that. It's unbelievable how a person's words can stick in the back of your mind and push you to be more than what they say you can be."