Video: 4-foot-2 Texas football player knows no limits
Attitude is everything for Plano West wide receiver Ricardo Benitez.
There is no getting around it,
Ricardo Benitez is not particularly tall.
The 4-foot-2 senior at
Plano West (Plano, Texas) was born without a femur in both legs.
"Doctors told my parents I had a condition called Femur Hypoplasia Bilateral and it might be best to stop the pregnancy," Benitez said. "They said I had a hole in my heart, would be in a wheelchair the rest of my life and never play sports. But my parents saw me as a gift from God and went on with the pregnancy. I crawled until I was two and didn't start running until I was five."
Growing up, Benitez didn't want to just walk or run – he wanted to play football. Other kids saw him as different and it ate at him. He wasn't medically cleared to play until the seventh grade.
But now Benitez is doing what he enjoys and what many said he would never do.
"I don't play football for publicity," Benitez said. "I would be mad as heck if teams let me score touchdowns (out of pity). I'm just a regular 17-year-old kid playing football because I love it."
Ricardo Benitez on the Plano West field and at Dallas Cowboys camp with Ezekiel Elliott.
Photos courtesy Ricardo Benitez
Don't consider him as a sob story. An opposing player made that mistake and mocked him during a freshman game. Benitez lined up at nose tackle, bear-crawled into the backfield and took out the running back — as seen in the video above.
He's even an inspiration to America's Team.
"Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett called and invited me to give a speech to their team last summer at OTAs," Benitez said. "I told them, 'There's no excuse why we can't be a great team this year. Look at me. If I can do it, y'all can do it. No excuses.'"
Call it a coincidence, but the Cowboys tied a franchise record with 13 wins last season. Superstars Dez Bryant and Ezekiel Elliott both follow him on Twitter and the latter even retweeted a viral play of Benitez running a route and catching a pass at a camp last month.
Benitez missed all of last season after surgery to put a metal plate in his right leg to properly connect the tendons. But that doesn't stop the 105-pound receiver from bench pressing more than twice his weight (225 pounds).
He's now ready to compete in his first and final year of varsity football.
"I've been getting up at 5:30 a.m., four days a week this summer to lift with our team,'' Benitez said. "A lot of kids quit last season when they weren't getting playing time. But they all know I'm not quitting. Coach told me I'll be playing receiver this year. I know I'm not entitled to playing time and have to earn it."
Plano West head coach Scott Smith realizes the benefit of having someone like Benitez on the team.
"He's the type of kid every coach wants on their team," Smith said. "There's never an excuse out of his mouth and he fires you up. Every kid on the team wants to hang out with him outside of football because of his upbeat personality. He's as strong as any kid in our program for his size. If there's something he can't do in the weight room, he'll do something that correlates. He doesn't take any reps or plays off. He's the soul of the team. Benitez is an average player who does above-average things because of who he is."
Benitez mentors children with disabilities at summer camps and ran for class president. He would like to coach high school football after taking a shot at playing in college.
"I don't want a scholarship, I just want a chance to play football," Benitez said of playing at the next level. "If I get cut, so what. I can still say I tried. If goals don't scare you, they aren't big enough."
Perhaps he can have the same type of impact at Plano West this fall that he did for the Cowboys last season. The program has produced five NFL players since 2000 but struggled to a 1-9 record a year ago.
