Being different is nothing new for five-year-old Jordan Marotta.
Marotta was born with symbrachydactyly, a congenital condition that causes a child to be born with short or webbed fingers. In Marotta’s case, he was born with no fingers on his left hand. His family calls this his “nubby.”
Despite his one hand and an age gap of over a decade, Marotta’s maturity and personality has allowed him to bond with the Stony Brook University baseball team. After months of tagging along at practices and forming friendships with the players, Marotta was officially signed as a Seawolf in late January.
“We love having him around and I think he really enjoys being around the guys,” coach Matt Senk said.
The Marotta family, of Dix Hills, NY were paired with Stony Brook through a partnership with Team IMPACT, a non-profit company designed to link children with disabilities and college sports teams.
“I have some friends that were involved with Team IMPACT,” Ashley Marotta, Jordan’s mom, said. “What they do is they match children who have either visible or invisible differences like Jordan. They find kids who maybe feel like they don’t fit in or aren’t part of a team and match those kids up with a local college sports team.” IMPACT is based in Boston.
For the Marottas, the signing was anything but purely symbolic.
“These kids become fully embraced in the program,” Ashley Marotta said. “They’re part of the team, they’re contracted by the team and they truly feel like they are a member of that given team.”
In May 2024, the Marotta family added an interesting aspect to Jordan’s story with what his mother called his “glorified toy.” With the help of Open Bionics, Marotta became the youngest-ever recipient of a bionic hand that he got customized to mimic his favorite superhero: Iron Man.
This high-tech Iron Man-themed gadget often steals the show. However, for the Marottas, the story is that of being part of the team.
To Marotta’s complete surprise, he opened the door of a conference room in the Stony Brook Athletics building to find his teammates seated and chanting his name as he walked in. He then met Senk at the front of the room, where he signed his letter of intent, officially making him a Seawolf.
“Like every kid, he cries when he gets on the school bus,” Ashley Marotta said. “So to see that smile, the confidence and the way he felt like he was on top of the world that night when he walked into a room of college kids cheering his name, the only word that comes to mind is priceless.”
“It’s not about [the arm],” Josh Marotta said. “This is about how a team of college athletes came together to embrace a child that is going through something and I think that is really special.”
George Caratzas is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.
This story, which has been edited for length, originally ran in Stony Brook University’s newspaper, The Statesman.