No Troubles for Butch Lumpkin

by Max Jensen
June 28, 2010 6:43 PM


Our Taco John's Athlete of the Week was a speaker at the Legends Clinics in Sioux Falls.  Butch Lumpkin travels the country motivating athletes and proving that anything truly is possible.

Butch Lumpkin is a seven-sport athlete. He started out playing baseball, football and soccer.

"When ever we got ahead by three they put me in at goalie," said Lumpkin.  "As kind of an insult to the other team."

He says he was never scored on which is amazing because Butch was born with deformed arms and hands. He's turned that disadvantage into his strength. Along with the other sports Lumpkin, with the help of books and freeze frames, taught himself such sports as golf and tennis.  Both which use extensive arm movements.

"In tennis, I have the same low to high swing I have the same strokes," said Lumpkin.  "I'm just moving my legs to get myself to the right heights."

Lumpkin is a tennis coach in Georgia, a motivational speaker and he can break 80 on the golf course. It's his "get-up-and-go" attitude that has driven him to where he's at as an athlete.

"It's just a matter of learning how to think and being smart at what you're doing," said Lumpkin.

He preaches focusing on what you have rather than what you don't have. That message rang loud to this group of kids at a tennis camp in Sioux Falls.

"You say do it your way and i'll do it my way and impossible isn't really a word because you can do stuff no one really thinks you can do," said Tory Schafer.

Schafer is just one of many in awe of Lumpkin and his ability to overcome his disability and excel at sports.

"You're like, ‘Whoa! That's crazy,’" said Schafer.

It may seem crazy but it's just another example that the mind is stronger than the body. And whether you have a disability or you don't, if you put your mind to it you can accomplish anything.