Icy efficiency

BRIDGEWATER -- Tuck one arm behind your back and try tying your shoes.

Or raking leaves.

Or shuffling cards.

Or, better yet, playing bone-jarring ice hockey.

Then imagine breaking your other arm. And your collarbone, not once but three times. And persevering nonetheless.

Maybe then you can fathom the wonder of Brian Hughes.

While the world often seems too much for so many afflicted with minor aches and irritations, Hughes happily makes his way shorthanded, playing the game he loves even though he has never managed to grip his hockey stick as tightly as anyone else.

A sophomore forward for the varsity team at Bridgewater-Raynham Regional High School, Hughes, 15, has thrived in hockey's rough-and-tumble arena despite coping since birth with little more than half a right arm. He has toured North America as the youngest member of the US National Amputee Team, his hockey stick protruding from a pad he slips over the stump below his right elbow. And though he plans to help the amputee squad pursue a world championship in Latvia in May, Hughes plans to skip a US tournament in April so he can try out for Bridgewater-Raynham's varsity baseball team (he played on the freshman team last year as a lefthanded pitcher, in the mold of former major leaguer Jim Abbott).

Not bad, considering the family pediatrician told his parents when he was an infant that he would never play ball. And that a doctor advised his mother, Peggy, when she was 12 weeks pregnant, to think about having an abortion.

''In my 10 years of coaching, this is the first kid that really ever inspired me," said Dave Patrick, the assistant varsity coach at Bridgewater-Raynham, who also employs Hughes in his landscaping business. ''A lot of people look at Brian like he has some kind of disability, but not him. He has developed ways to overcome any disadvantage he might have."

Hughes all but celebrates his condition with a touch of wit. After he rejected his coach's offer to skip a preseason conditioning drill, for example, he joined his teammates in counting off pushups. But while his teammates maintained a rhythmic cadence -- ''1, 2, 3, 4" -- Hughes pushed off his right stump and left arm, shouting, ''1, 1 1/2, 2, 2 1/2 . . .," cracking up the team.

Hughes smiles when varsity coach Mark Jones barks at him to keep ''two hands on the stick" and he has no problem with his friends calling him ''Nubby."

''I like how he jokes about [his condition] and never gets mad about it," sophomore goalie Nick Ives said. ''But I'm really impressed by how much of a normal life he lives. He does everything just as good, if not better, than other kids."

Only once, according to his principal, teachers, and coaches, has Hughes exploited his condition for a special privilege.

''He told a teacher once, 'I have a disability and have trouble getting in the lunch line, so I have to leave class a little early,' " Patrick said.

The scam enabled Hughes to load his tray and dine leisurely while his classmates waited in line, watching in envy. But the ruse lasted only long enough for the teacher, perplexed by Hughes's uncharacteristic request, to seek the coach's advice.

''I said, 'Don't worry about Brian. He doesn't have any trouble doing anything. And he eats like a horse,' " Patrick recalled.

Hughes, who is nearly 6 feet 4 inches and built more like a basketball player than a hockey player, could use some extra weight as he battles along the boards with stockier rivals. He sometimes lurches out of position by favoring his right side when he delivers a hit. And despite his uncanny ability to control his stick with only one hand, he will become more effective as he sharpens his stickhandling and generates more power on his shot.

But his mere presence in interscholastic hockey has struck many who have crossed his path as a triumph of the human spirit.

''He probably doesn't think of himself as a role model, but he is," said Bridgewater-Raynham principal Jeff Granatino. ''When someone is complaining about something, they look at Brian and realize they really don't have a whole lot to complain about."

Peggy Hughes said she initially was ''devastated" that her son would enter the world without a right hand and forearm. She feared he would struggle to thrive in mainstream society and suffer psychologically. But Hughes, an accreditation manager for the Norfolk County Sheriff's Department, said she and her husband, Jim, a corporate operations manager, drew strength from Helping Hands, a support group for families who have children with differences in their upper limbs.

''Every parent wants a healthy baby with 10 fingers and 10 toes," she said. ''The other mothers helped us realize we weren't alone, that Brian wasn't the only kid born like this."

For his part, Hughes resolved at an early age to keep pace with his peers, no matter the effort. Through annual visits to the Shriners Hospital for Children in Springfield, he received shoes he could lace with one hand and various prosthetic arms and hands. But he decided by age 8 to go it alone, even after he broke his only full functional arm sliding into home plate in his first game of Babe Ruth League baseball.

No special shoes. No prosthetics. Hughes found ways to improvise and spent countless, solitary hours refining his methods.

''I didn't know if it was going be harder for me," he said while his teammates gathered at his Bridgewater home for a pasta party on the eve of a recent game. ''I just tried to do a little more than everybody else did."

The extra work helped Hughes lead the junior varsity last year in scoring, win a varsity job this year, and establish himself as one of the most promising members of the National Amputee Team, which hopes to compete for gold in the 2010 Paralympic Games in Vancouver.

''The best compliment I could give him is that I didn't even notice [his disability]," Whitman-Hanson coach Rich Manning said after Hughes played well for Bridgewater-Raynham's fourth line in a recent game at the Rockland Ice Rink. ''He played just like everybody else. He really must have a lot of passion for the game to go through what he has gone through to play at this level."

Middleboro coach Tim Kinch said he was ''blown away" by Hughes's effort.

''He truly must be an inspiration to his teammates as well as the fans," Kinch said. ''From my perspective, he does not play as though his handicap is a hindrance at all. From what I've seen, he possesses great on-ice instincts, the kind of innate skill you cannot teach."

Hughes's teammates on the national team include former Harvard goalie Mike Ginal, who in 1998 became the first hockey player to compete in NCAA Division 1 with a prosthetic limb (his left leg was amputated below the knee at a young age because of bone tumors), and Mike Logan, a senior at Archbishop Williams who was born with a right arm similar to Hughes's and has thrived on the ice while using a prosthetic.

The US team beat a Canadian national squad last year for the first time, thanks in part to Hughes, said Dr. David Crandell, who founded the US team and serves as president of the American Amputee Hockey Association. The American team includes several players in their 30s and 40s.

''He's probably the best-natured kid I've seen," said Crandell, a rehabilitation specialist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School. ''Nothing seems to faze him."

Crandell said he expects Hughes to rank among the ''higher-level elite" international players by the 2010 Paralympic Games, while Jones projects Hughes will be ''a very high performer" in interscholastic hockey by his senior year.

Yet Hughes already has improved the performances of his most talented teammates.

''We might be having a bad game, but then we see him skate out there and run people over and fight for the puck and get shots on net, and it inspires us to go out the next shift and do better," said senior winger and assistant captain Ryan McElhinney, the team's leading scorer.

To Hughes, the praise is a bit puzzling. It seems he grew accustomed long ago to trying a little harder than everyone else.

''I don't think I'm doing anything special," he said as he prepared a one-handed attack on a plate of pasta.