A Man Who Will Not Quit

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By Ray Glier

The guy just won’t turn off.

Andy Steinfeldt, 78, and his capacity for weathering health calamities earned him the nickname Mr. Impossible. We’re talking fighting prostate cancer (12 years), Parsonage-Turner Syndrome (a nerve disorder), one artery out of three working in one leg, due to a surgical accident, deterioration of bones because of radiation, which includes five pelvic fractures. I've left out more, but you get the point.

I wrote about him four years ago.

Andy should have been a husk, an empty shell, going to the free throw line at The Minnesota Senior Games last weekend to compete in the Free Throw Shooting contest. 

Instead, Steinfeldt hardly gave the nets a break. He de drained 8 of 10 and won a gold medal.

The teams he assembled in the 70-79 age bracket won a gold medal and silver medal, respectively, in 3-on-3 basketball. A Player-Coach, Andy took one shot—his patented running hook. He made it….with a bad rotator cuff. 

There is no calibration with Andy.

How long do I have?

Instead, he says…

..What else can I do?

One of his doctors at The Mayo Clinic, the head of sports medicine at the Minneapolis clinic location, did not clear him for basketball. The doc’s name is Dr. Payne, which is appropriate for what Steinfeldt and Payne see and feel every day.

“I came into one of the games for the last minute of junk time,” Steinfeldt said. “My one shot was a running hook shot and it went in. I had been practicing it without pain so I gave myself license to play for a minute.

“It was a baby step. Dr. Payne told me that the insufficiency (hip) fractures (due to bone weakening from two rounds of radiation) may never heal completely, but there is a possibility I could eventually return to half-court basketball.”

And then there is this from Andy:

“I just can’t get competition out of my blood—and despite having surgery scheduled to repair multiple abdominal hernias (another result of radiation damage) in November, I am still training to break the Guinness record for a reverse plank with a 100-pound weight on my back next year—a record I have already broken, but it was disallowed due to “form”.  This time I’ll make sure there is no sag.”

When you think disease is inflexible, just remember….

…it’s not.

Andy with his plank at the 2022 National Senior Games. They had to shoo him off stage he held that pose so long at 74 years old. Photo by Jackie Moon.