Magical moment. (The Goodness of America).

Jake Porter, 17, is a senior at Northwest High School in McDermott, Ohio, a city of about 3,000 near the Kentucky border. He was born with chromosomal fragile X syndrome, a genetic malady that causes mental retardation. Despite the disability, he has earned a reputation for persistence in striving to achieve his goals, especially in the sports that he loves.

Track is his favorite sport, but he is also a member of the school's basketball team, and during three years on the football squad he suited up for every game and never missed a practice. Dave Frantz, Northwest's head football coach, describes him as "a pretty special kid" who "rewards us daily just by being around us.... He makes everybody's day."

Due to his condition, Jake could not participate in contact drills. Indeed, until last October he never carried a ball during a game, though on one occasion last year Coach Frantz, knowing that having the chance to simply touch the ball would be a thrill for him, sent Jake in for one play to "take a knee" (drop to a knee to end the play after receiving the ball).

Northwest's record this year was a rather dismal 3-7, including its final home game on October 18th against heavily favored Waverly High School. Waverly was headed for the state playoffs for only the second time in 100 years under the tutelage of Coach Derek DeWitt. A few days prior to the game, coach Frantz contacted his rival to suggest that, if the contest turned out to be as lopsided as expected, Jake be allowed to safely take another knee on a play. Coach DeWitt readily agreed.

On game day, the visiting Northwest team arrived early, giving DeWitt a chance to meet Jake, whom he found to be "a wonderful kid." The game went as expected, and with five seconds remaining in the fourth quarter Waverly led 42 to 0. Northwest had the ball on Waverly's 49-yard line when Coach Frantz called timeout so he and Coach DeWitt could meet at midfield to discuss the final play and make sure they were on the same wavelength. But as DeWitt was walking back to the sideline, he began to feel uneasy about the arrangement. So he called a timeout and returned to midfield to inform Frantz that Jake would do more than touch the ball; he would score a touchdown. As described by Tim Ellsworth, a columnist for web-based BP Sports, "At first, Frantz objected. Waverly had played a good game, and Frantz didn't want to spoil his opponent's shutout. But DeWitt insisted. 'The shutout is not important,' DeWitt told Frantz. 'There's something bigger here.'"

After discussing the revised scenario with game officials, who agreed to go along, Frantz told his quarterback to give Jake the ball while DeWitt instructed his defense to keep hands off Jake.

Wearing No. 45 on his jersey, Jake entered the huddle as a tailback. There was, however, a problem: he had only practiced taking a handoff, then dropping to a knee. When play resumed, as described by ESPN Radio sports anchor Wayne Soares in his November 21st "Sports Wrap" column, "Jake got the hand off and proceeded to go to one knee as he was taught. His teammates stopped him and told him to run. Jake started to run in the wrong direction until the referee literally turned him back towards the line of scrimmage. His teammates cheered him on and yelled for him to run for the goal line. The Waverly defensive line parted like the Red Sea and cheered him on enthusiastically. Fathers and mothers in the stands cried and cheered Jake on as players from both teams held their helmets high."

With players from both teams running with him step-for-step, Jake crossed the goal line, then pumped his arm in the air as if, in Coach DeWitt's words, "he'd won the Rose Bowl." Kansas City Star columnist Joe Posnanski wrote on November 1st that in the stands "Waverly and Northwest fans cheered and danced and cried.... It was bedlam. People ran on the field. Opposing players hugged. Children re-enacted Jake's run. Everybody wanted their photo taken with Jake. There has never been anything quite like it in McDermott."

In the game's aftermath, according to the November 7th Huntington (West Virginia) Herald-Dispatch, "Every media entity imaginable has contacted Northwest High School to do a piece on Jake Porter's magical moment." ESPN's SportsCenter sent a camera crew to McDermott; Jake, his mother (Liz), and Coach Frantz appeared on NBC's Today Show; NBC Nightly News had a crew follow the youth around during the entire school day on November 5th; Sports Illustrated published a column about the event; and ABC ran a story during halftime of the November 2nd Ohio State-Minnesota game.

ESPN's Soares notes that both Northwest and Waverly "have already been beneficiaries of that day. Kids are starting to show more respect to each other and some have begun to include the mentally challenged kids in their cliques." As for Jake's view of his team's 42 to 6 loss, Star columnist Posnanski observes that to this day Jake "is sure he scored the winning touchdown in that game.... And you know what? He did."