Athletic lifestyle helps Tampa man dream big

At 4 feet 7 inches tall, he's an unlikely athlete.

But every time Edward Andrews goes to the Dwarf Athletic Association of America games, he comes back with more medals to wear around his neck.

He's won gold medals in soccer, basketball and baseball. And while collecting bling at his 13th games in July, Andrews, 23, and his teams nearly set a world record in a track and field relay and placed in volleyball and soccer.

"It's like you're a professional athlete for the week; it's different, you're competing with everyone who's the same size," Andrews says.

For people with dwarfism, pursuing an active lifestyle can be difficult. His father, Mark Andrews, a little person with a larger-than-life personality who was a stadium announcer for the Detroit Red Wings, told his son: "You can do it, but because you're small you have to work that much harder to compete."

Having the underdog experience time and time again as a child can take a toll, says William Mackenzie, chairman of the medical board of the Little People of America and a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.

"He knows he can catch the ball but is not as agile, doesn't have the strength -- and it gets old constantly playing against people who can run over you and run past you," Mackenzie says.

The dwarf games offer mental benefits for little people that may be greater than the average-sized person involved in sports, Mackenzie says. "They get to show their athletic skills and they get to win, and that's something they don't get to do in regular athletics."

Andrews' active lifestyle has shaped his life. Many people with his condition, achondroplasia dwarfism, don't pursue sports because it can be difficult physically and mentally.

For Andrews, that pursuit started with the love of a game he got from his father.

"Growing up, I played ice hockey -- that was kind of my main love," Andrews says. "As far as I know, I'm the only dwarf who's played competitive hockey."

The Little People of America estimates 30,000 people in the United States have a type of dwarfism. Depending on the diagnosis, some high-impact and contact sports can be dangerous to those who have a fragile spine.

Andrews had to give up hockey because of a spinal condition. When he was a young teen, a doctor told him a back injury could be fatal.

It didn't deter him from other sports, though.

Andrews says his condition encourages him to live healthy.

"That's something that can be kind of fatal to some little people is just not having an active lifestyle, so I want to kind of continue having one," he says.

The dwarf games gave him an opportunity to play sports with other people more like him, "And that's when we found out he was unusually gifted as an athlete," his mother, Margaret Rees-Baker, says.

Andrews has made the most of those opportunities. He set a record in his first time competing in the 100-meter dash - a race he says he didn't even train for.

He even made the varsity baseball team at his Michigan high school.

"He's the kind of the kid you want to have on your team; not necessarily because he was the most talented, but because he was an inspiration," says Grosse Point South High baseball coach Dan Griesbaum.

His coach remembers Andrews' first varsity hit: a baseline drive down the middle. "Everyone just went crazy."

Andrews' dad died of colon cancer in 2004, when he was only 17. That same year he set the set the national and world record in the 100-meter dash for little people.

"Sports is what helped him get through the initial grief of his father's death," says Rees-Baker. "He threw himself into baseball, it gave him a place where he was happy, where he felt close to his dad."

In Andrews' senior year, the baseball team made it to the state's final four. And he continued to play baseball-and soccer-in high school, then in college, where he stayed active as a sports management major at Florida Southern College.

Now the 23-year-old works as a marketing and sales representative for the Tampa Bay Lightning and has his sights set on his ultimate career goal: becoming the president of a major sports franchise.

"We [little people] have the same life that everyone else does," Andrews says. "We just have different challenges."