Auburn University student Gabe Puthoff was born with a disability called spinal bifida, a birth defect where an area of the spinal column doesn’t form properly — but that never stopped him from playing sports.
Puthoff, who wears leg braces to help with balance and mobility, grew up in a sports household. Both his parents grew up playing sports, and his brother, who’s one year older than him, also played sports growing up.
Surrounded by sports at a young age, Puthoff naturally wanted to get in on the action too. He and his brother played little league baseball on the same team, and when they weren’t on the diamond, the two were shooting hoops in the driveway or playing football with other kids in the neighborhood.
Puthoff played able-bodied sports through middle school, and it was in high school when he found out that adaptive sports existed.
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From there, he joined the Cincinnati Dragons, a wheelchair basketball team in Ohio that competes in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s junior division.
Puthoff said he always wanted to play sports in college, citing that growing up he thought he would be a college baseball player. His goal did not come to fruition right away, however, as Puthoff spent his freshman year at the University of Dayton.
But then, Auburn got in contact with him and recruited him to the Plains to play wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis – meaning Puthoff would get his chance to play college athletics.
Puthoff spent his last three years of college at Auburn, balancing wheelchair basketball in the fall and putting focus on wheelchair tennis in the spring — a sport he had played for fun.
“For the majority of the fall, basically starting in August, basketball was the first priority. So, we would work around basketball tournaments. We went to a few tournaments. We went to Tuscaloosa to play Bama, went to San Diego in September, which was great, played San Diego State, and then an Auburn tournament and we went to Rome, Ga. But it was working around basketball, and then in the spring, once basketball was over around March, it was basically just full-on tennis.”
When basketball season wrapped up and Puthoff shifted his focus from the basketball court to the tennis court, he showed his multi-sport talent with a run to the Flight A individual Final Four in Stillwater, Okla.
Prior to the Final Four, Puthoff competed for seeding in Orlando in April. There, the season’s team championship was decided, while individuals in Flight A advanced to Stillwater, to play as a showcase for the sport of wheelchair tennis in the same location as the NCAA letterman’s tennis championship event. Puthoff said he “didn’t do too hot” in Orlando and was handed the No. 4 seed as he went to the Final Four.
But his seeding did not discourage him. In the semifinals, matched up against Alabama’s Martha Harris, Puthoff got back on his game, downed Alabama and qualified for the national championship.
Things looked bleak in the match as Puthoff trailed 4-1. Transitioning from a fast-paced sport in basketball to a slower sport in tennis, Puthoff said his patience and playing “the best mental game that I had” was the key to climbing back into the match and eventually completing the rally with a 6-4 win.
“I played with a lot of patience. I’m used to basketball, and that’s more fast-paced and intense so I slowed down a little bit. I stuck to the gameplan we had which was good,” he said. “…I think I just didn’t get too mad or too down on myself when things were not going my way.”
For Puthoff, staying alive and getting the chance to compete for the national title was big, but even more, taking down Alabama while doing so and opening the field for a new national champion went a long way.
“It felt good because I won to stay alive another day and not leave Stillwater early, but then also, Bama has won it the last seven years or six years or something crazy like that,” he said. “To end that reign of terror that they had was very good. The championship could go to anyone going forward, basically. It used to be give Bama the trophy before it even started, but now it’s kind of different so it felt very good.”
While Puthoff did not win the national championship the following day, falling to Arizona’s Eric Court, representing Auburn was a big deal for him, and he hopes that his runner-up finish brings in recruits to compete in adaptive sports at Auburn.
“I wanted to win it so bad just for Auburn,” Puthoff said. “I got so many texts from various people who said they were watching. It hopefully brings in some recruits for the future. I wanted to win it so bad for Auburn. For myself, it would have been nice, but I definitely wanted to win more for Auburn.”
