Hansel Enmanuel 2024
Hansel Enmanuel 2024 Austin Peay basketball photo.
College basketball player Hansel Enmanuel lost most of his left arm in a childhood accident in the Dominican Republic
The Austin Peay State University player has more than 4 million followers on social media, where he posts footage of his explosive dunks
Enmanuel is also a star on the NIL front, scoring deals with Adidas, Gatorade, Oakley and ZOA Energy drinks
Just three days after having surgery on his knee following an injury last November, college basketball player Hansel Enmanuel was back on his feet and running around in his apartment, recalls his coach, Corey Gipson, who then holds up his cell phone in a Zoom call with PEOPLE to show video proof of the 6 foot 6 inch tall athlete bounding up a staircase.
“Hansel’s turnaround has been faster than anybody I've ever coached who had those types of surgeries,” Gipson, the head coach of Enmanuel’s Austin Peay State University Governors basketball team in Clarksville, Tenn., says. “It’s remarkable.”
So is the rest of Enmanuel’s story. The 21-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, where he was raised by his grandmother while his mother was living overseas, lost most of his left arm at age 6 when a concrete wall collapsed on him.
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Nevertheless, he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, a professional basketball player in a local league, by learning to dribble, shoot and sink baskets with only one hand.
Today he is a standout guard on the Austin Peay squad and a star on social media, with more than 4 million followers. His viral videos are hypnotic, hard-to-comprehend highlight reels, featuring explosive dunks and intricate maneuvers performed by the lightning-fast athlete, such as bouncing a basketball on a fast break behind his back and then picking up the dribble to score.
Hansel Enmanuel #24 of the Austin Peay Governors in November 2024.
Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images
Enmanuel was executing a play just like that one during a late-November game when he made a bad landing and — for the first time in his career — was sidelined with a knee injury.
“The doctor told me that I got to pull my part,” Enmanuel says. “So I think that was the key, me doing my extra work, just rehab and stuff. And I think I did a pretty decent job.”
While his teammates went on winter break, the college junior hit the gym and by the start of the year, he was back in the Governors lineup.
Enmanuel’s swift recovery comes as no surprise given the course of his life since that fateful accident in 2009.
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“My background is really, really dark,” he says.
But after developing his hoop skills and playing on youth teams in the D.R., he was recruited by a Christian prep school in Florida and moved there in 2021.
Gipson tapped him to play for Louisiana’s Northwestern State University in 2022, and both coach and player have since moved on to Austin Peay, where they’ve grown even closer.
“I’m becoming a better person, growing up, and I'm glad that I met this man next to me,” Enmanuel says, pointing to Gipson.
Hansel Enmanuel (far right) with his father and grandmother.
Courtesy Hansel Enmanuel
Recently, Enmanuel and Gipson made time after a game to meet with a teenager who had a prosthetic limb.
“Hansel said to him, ‘I just want you to know that you can be anything you want to be in life and never let anybody tell you you can't,’ ” Gipson recalls. “When he walks out to the court to warm up, Hansel has the loudest voice, and everybody in the arena knows it. The energy just changes once he enters the room. He's leading in an on-and-off-the-court way, and that wasn't always the case when he was younger.”
Enmanuel is also an up-and-comer in the NIL (Name, Image and Likeness) arena, having scored deals with Gatorade, Adidas, Oakley and ZOA Energy drinks.
But when he’s on the court, the athlete has only one goal in mind.
“Get to the NBA,” he says.
And now that the rising star is back in dunk-making form, taking his team into its conference tournament, Gipson is optimistic.
“I give him another week or so,” he says, “and you'll probably be seeing him on SportsCenter Top 10.”