Following a tragic farming accident that made him a below-the-knee amputee, doctors gave a young Jeff Glasbrenner an endless list of physical activities to avoid.
That was the last thing the 8-year-old wanted to hear. It's also the order he has devoted his life to defying.
Glasbrenner, 51, is one of 10 members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame's 2024 class. He is the first first American amputee to summit Mount Everest and a three-time wheelchair basketball Paralympian. He's completed more than two dozen Ironman Triathlons and is a father to a daughter, Grace, and son, Gavin.
"I think that that was my calling, losing my leg and always being told I couldn't play sports, and then discovering later on in the world that why can't I?" Glasbrenner said. "I just have to go about it in a different way than a lot of other people do, and I have to have legs made to help support that goal, but for me, sports has been a big proving ground because I was always told I couldn't. And so I always like to prove that I can. I love when people doubt me. I love when the cards are stacked against me because that's when it's go time."
After losing his right leg in 1980, Glasbrenner spent the next decade of his life on the sidelines watching his sister Jenelle and their other three siblings compete.
"When I first lost the leg, the doctor said I couldn't play any sports, and the hardest part was just watching my sister," Glasbrenner said. "She was the best athlete male or female in school."
One day at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, a member of the wheelchair basketball team saw Glasbrenner hopping toward the bathroom and recruited him to join the team.
That conversation and Glasbrenner later joining the team opened a new world.
"I didn't know that I could even do anything," he said. "And so I think that once I got the opportunity and knew that there were sports that I could play, the second I got introduced to it I was full on, trying to become the best I could."
Glasbrenner did not grow up in a wheelchair, so everything about wheelchair basketball was foreign to him at the start. But the natural athleticism he wasn't able to utilize in the decade prior took over and two years after starting, he made his first national team.
"I was training five, six, seven, eight hours a day right away from the beginning," he said. "... I think growing up on a farm, I was taught that work ethic, and then I was athletic, I just didn't know I was, you know? I knew my sister was, but I was given that opportunity and a lot of times in life, if you're given an opportunity, you can either take it or you can let it slip by. And I wasn't gonna let it slip by now."
Glasbrenner is a two-time world champion, four-time national champion and scored 63 points in the 2004 national championship game.
He and the Arkansas Rollin' Razorbacks competed in the NWBA national championships this past weekend, falling in the Division III semifinals.
Glasbrenner was set to be a part of the Hall of Fame's 2023 class, but he asked to delay his induction one year so that he could ski to the North Pole. Due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that trip hasn't materialized. But Glasbrenner says he's got plenty left on the bucket list and is always looking for more.
"I love pushing the boundaries, and I love trying to find something that I can't do and then trying to find a way to do it," he said. "Those goals and stuff always scare me. And so that's what kind of interests me to do them because I know I can do a 5K, that's not even an issue, but can I do this?"
After accomplishing lifetimes worth of impressive feats, Glasbrenner is looking to keep pushing his boundaries. His next challenge is to run the Dragon's Back Race, a 380-kilometer, 6-day race through remote parts of Wales in September.
"I just really believe the biggest growth we can have as an individual is getting out of our comfort zone," Glasbrenner said. "[While] climbing Mount Everest, I was in the 'death zone' -- I don't necessarily live in the death zone, but I definitely like to live in the uncomfortable zone. I think that we have to struggle most days to make that day a great day."