Daily Buzz: Quadruple amputee inspires both on and off the soccer field

Published Mar. 20, 2014 6:19 p.m. ET

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Sam Gardner

Jorge Dyksen is a starting forward for the JV soccer team at Manchester Regional High School in Haledon, NJ, and though he may never be a star, Dyksen is both a leader and an inspiration to the other players on the Falcons' roster.

That's because Dyksen, who came to the US from Panama at 16 months old, is a quadruple amputee who plays the game without the use of his arms — not necessarily a bad thing in the game of soccer — and on a set of prosthetic legs.

An infection at just 14 months old led to the amputation of all four of Dyksen's limbs, but Dyksen, who came to the US through a program called Healing the Children New Jersey, has never been one to let his physical challenges slow him down:

"I would tell (people) never give up, because I don'€™t give up on things," Dyksen told Incredible Features in the video above. "I have no hands and feet, and I still do things without them, and people should know that they shouldn't give up, either."

After living with host parents Faye and John Dyksen for more than a decade, Jorge was officially adopted in 2009 and became a US citizen last May, according to NorthJersey.com.

Playing soccer hasn'€™t always been as simple as Dyksen would like — John Dyksen joked that when he was younger, Jorge's legs would often fly off and travel farther than the ball when he kicked it — but his tenacity in the face of his physical impairments isn't lost on his teammates.

Said Dyksen's coach Daniel Sanchez: "It just makes everyone else try that much harder."

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• Cal Poly and Texas Southern combined for quite the ugly play in a 16-seed First Four game in Dayton:

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