Lee County’s Trip Block hardly ever misses a sporting event

ALBANY — He calls himself the biggest fan of Lee County High School athletics.

And just about every event played at the school, you can usually see him. From the football field to the gymnasium to the baseball diamond, Trip Block never misses a game, at least if he can help it.

Block battles spina bifida, a rare condition affecting less than 200,000 newborns each year. It is a birth defect where there is incomplete closing of the backbone and membranes around the spinal cord. Block is confined to a wheelchair.

Born in Albany with the disease in its most complex and dangerous form, Block experienced nerve damage to his spine that required surgery at just a day old. He was then taken to Atlanta Scottish Rite Hospital to have surgery where his backbone had failed to close.

Despite his condition, Block found passion in a sport that would keep him pushing forward in life past what doctors were expecting.

“I wanted to be like all the other kids and learned to love baseball at an early age,” he said. “When I was seven, I wanted to play really badly that I worried my mom to please sign me up.”

His mother was not too keen on the idea.

“It was very hard; he was in school and when they would send the flyers to the house to play sports, I would just throw them away,” Tracy Block said. “I figured no one would let him play. Then the little boy across the street told him he got to try out.”

Block was disappointed.

“That really hurt me, finding out she did that,” Trip said.

Determined, he got what he wanted, playing pony to pee wee league baseball as a child. Later as a sophomore, he picked up his wheelchair and hit the ground running as part of the Lee County track & field team.

While he was loving life and sports, his athletic career took a strange twist.

“During the summer, the beginning of my senior year, I became very sick and had to have lung surgery here in Albany,” Block said.

He spent the greater part of that summer in the hospital due to respiratory infection and fluid buildup within his lungs.

He never got to play sports again but found his true calling — motivational speaking and offering encouragement to Lee County athletes. Much of what gives Trip the meaning to his own life comes from the relationships that he forms in the lives of others.

“Trip has been a great guy for as long as I have known him,” Lee High head baseball coach Brandon Brock said. “He is the ultimate Trojan fan.”

Trip rarely misses a game. Last year, a ramp was built outside of the backstop netting by craftsman Robert Reep in his honor and, to coach Brock’s delight, right beside the Lee County dugout.

“He deserves it; he is always supporting the guys, and that ramp helps him roll on up there and do that for the team,” he said.

Through much of his teen life, Block has been in and out of the hospital accumulating a total of 30 surgeries. He now feeds through a GJ feeding tube but remains cheerful that he is here for a purpose.

“I am here for a reason. With Jesus Christ as my lord and savior, I can overcome and be who I want to be,” he said.