The 20 or so bright-eyed kindergarten children in Mrs. Loenser’s classroom gathered around the small, confident sixth grader. Their mouths dropped in awe, the wheels in their heads spinning.

Nate Loenser had made the walk down to his mother’s elementary classroom in Cedar Falls, Iowa for a demonstration. He showed the children how he crossed the laces on his shoes, wrapped it around and finally pulled for a completed tie.

“It’s a big mountain for some of those kids to climb,” Nate says years later.

He sat in front of the young children year after year thereafter, the same shocked looks filling the room as he spoke.

Nate had his own mountain to climb. He was born with a partial left arm.

“I’m a big believer in we all kind of have a toolbox and we have different tools in our toolbox,” said Nate, now a 35-year-old graduate assistant at Iowa State. “Some people can run faster, some can jump higher, some people are taller, some people are shorter. I happen to have three and a half limbs.”

Growing up, Nate felt the looks and he heard the whispers. Walking through the mall he would hear the kids turn to their parents. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ he would hear one ask. Or simply, ‘Look, mommy.’

He understood this was human nature, but it bothered him most when he could only hear the whispers and not answer the questions. So there were no nerves as the young, small-for-his-age boy stood above the youngsters who had wide eyes and many questions.

“How do you tie yours shoes with one hand?” an inquisitive child would ask.

“How do you tie your shoes with two hands?” Nate would respond. “I’ve never done it that way. I don’t know how to.”

The children would sit amazed at how fast Nate could tie his shoes and more surprised that, ultimately, it looked just the same as theirs.

“That served as a good eye-opener for young people to see, just because someone is a little bit different, doesn’t mean they can’t do some of the same things,” Nate said.

While attending Northern University High School in Cedar Falls, Nate was a four-sport athlete, participating in baseball, basketball, football and golf.

He would swap prosthetic arms for various sports and eventually began playing some sports without one altogether. There were always refinements to find the perfect way to play or to improve his game.

“He would always tell those little people, ‘Don’t give up, try to find a way to get the job done,’” said his mother, Genie Loenser.

Making a trip north

Every six months, the Loenser’s packed into their car and drove the 218 miles or so north to the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

Larry and Genie always made sure it was a fun trip, finding a Minnesota Twins or Timberwolves game to attend or even a nearby zoo. The next morning they would get up early at the hotel and drive to the Shriners Hospital for Children.

The doctor had two options: He could scrape some of Nate’s prosthetic arm away to make it to the next appointment, or they could begin crafting a new arm.

“You outgrow your shoes, you get bigger shoes. You outgrow your jeans, you get bigger jeans,” Nate said. “When I outgrew my prosthetic arm, I got the new prosthetic arm and knew the deal.”

Nate and his family would make the trip every six months until he turned 21. All expenses were paid for by Shriners, making things easier for his family.

His trip to Minnesota became just the same as a dentist appointment.

“I never had it any other way,” Nate said. “If I’d lost it, it would be different I think. I didn’t have to make any adjustments, this is what I had.”

There was never feeling sorry for himself, Nate said. The trips to the hospital, where Nate would see children of all ages, made sure of that.

“You see kids in there, younger than you, that don’t have legs, that don’t have two arms, that can’t walk,” Nate said. “It was always a great reminder that if I ever tried to slip up and feel sorry for myself to say, ‘Hey, someone’s always got it better, and you know what, someone’s always got it worse.’

“That was a great thing to snap me back and say here’s the tools in your toolbox, make the most of them.”

Genie thinks Nate fully realized his situation when he was in first grade or so. He always knew it was just the way he was made, and his siblings would come home from school with problems of their own.

“No matter who you are, you have things to overcome,” Genie said. “Like your brown eyes, or you don’t like your hair or you don’t like something. Everyone has a challenge. If you approach it that way, nothing’s different. That’s a part of you.”

He never wanted to be perceived as a one-arm athlete, and he made sure of it.

“I don’t know that it ever got him down,” said his father, Larry. “If it did, I never noticed it. He was always just go, go, go.”

Finding success in baseball

Nate’s reflection stared back at him through the storm door of his Cedar Falls home as he held the bat in his right hand. With nobody looking, he rested the bat on his left nub and swung through.

He took another dry cut. He kept swinging, again and again, as he attempted to train his mind and his muscles.

All his life, Nate had batted right-handed with a prosthetic arm. He could consistently hit the ball to third base, and that worked fine until high school, when the third basemen had arms strong enough to throw him out.

So a coach recommended he switch to the left side.

“I said, ‘I don’t know. It’s whatever you want to do, but you probably should keep going the way you are,’” Larry said. “But no, he was going to switch.”

The key for Nate all along was to play sports just the same as everybody else.

“I understood that other people would say that I’m a one-arm baseball player,” Nate said. ”I never wanted to play how people would perceive a one-arm player to play.”

One day growing up, Nate crouched in his position at shortstop during a city recreation league game. One of his former coaches sat behind Nate’s parents.

“Boy, that guy is a really good shortstop,” someone told the coach.

“Yeah, pretty good for a guy with one arm,” his former coach responded.

“He’s only got one arm?” the guy quipped.

“The guy didn’t even notice,” Larry said. “It was so natural what he was doing.”

That’s how Nate wanted it to be.

During his sophomore year of high school, Nate finally made the transition to the left side of the plate. He had no prosthetic arm. He just rested the bat and took a cut with his right arm holding and swinging.

By the time the sophomore season came to an end, Nate had hit .081 and struck out in 27 of his 31 at-bats. He was determined to make it work.

“Was I frustrated as a sophomore? Yes. I kept working at it,” Nate said. “I wanted to be good and I was passionate about it. These were the tools in my toolbox, and I wanted to make the most of them.”

That off-season he took extra batting practice and he stood in front of his storm door taking swing after swing. In his junior season, he upped his average to .289.

The next season, during his senior campaign, Nate hit .596 with 60 stolen bases while being named an All-State player.

During his senior year of high school, Nate worked with ISU men’s basketball coach Tim Floyd to become a student manager beginning that summer. Both of his parents had gone to Iowa State and they had been season ticket holders since 1987 for basketball and 1972 for football.

Before the basketball season began his freshman year in Ames in 1997, Nate decided he still wanted to play, so he stopped being a manager. The next year, he attempted to walk-on the ISU baseball team. He didn’t make it.

Eventually, Nate played in a wooden bat league in Williamsburg, Iowa. He played against a guy named Tim Evans, who, during Nate’s fourth year at Iowa State, would become the hitting instructor.

One day, as Nate prepared for an intramural basketball game, his phone rang. The voice on the other end was Evans’. He wondered if Nate would be interested in joining the team as a walk-on.

“We just needed another edge to sharpen our team up a little bit,” Evans said. “I thought the opportunity to give Nate a chance to play would be unbelievable for him, but also the Iowa State Cyclones.

“He lives and dies red and gold.”

Within three weeks, Nate was traveling with the team. He made a pinch-running appearance against Iowa, and he would sometimes play in the outfield. When he went to his hometown to face Northern Iowa, he stepped to the plate.

The pitches sailed by, and Nate was walked, eventually scoring the lone run of his collegiate career.

“He doesn’t use it as a handicap at all,” Evans said. “It’s unbelievable how he does it, how he goes out and catches balls and takes his glove off and he throws with the other hand. He’s just extraordinary, man. I’ve never met a guy like it.”

Just weeks later, the baseball program was cut.

“It was short-lived,” Nate said. “But it was still an awesome opportunity to get to be a part of an actual Iowa State program and team.”

Making things work

The eyes are on Nate Loenser as he stands on the hardwood court at Hilton Coliseum before a top-25 matchup on a frigid February weeknight.

From the upper-deck, the eyes peer down.

“Sometimes the basket is in the way on a timeout and I can’t see,” Genie says.

From Section 228, Row 4, Seats 1 and 2, Genie and Larry look for Nate before every ISU game during his first season on the bench as a graduate assistant.

After spending six seasons with former ISU coach Larry Eustachy at Southern Mississippi, making only three return trips to Iowa along the way, Nate took the head boys basketball coaching job at Spirit Lake High School in 2010.

He had always wanted to get his master’s degree, so after three seasons, when a position opened on Fred Hoiberg’s staff, he and his wife, Jackie, whom he married in October 2012, moved to Ames.

“I felt extremely fortunate, extremely lucky. Not many people get to coach at their alma mater,” Nate said. “To get an opportunity to now be on the bench here is something that is really special to me.”

When Loenser has a one-on-one session with an ISU basketball player, he doesn’t bring in an extra rebounder. In pickup games, he surprises opponents, players say, with an ability to cross them over.

“He continues to come out here and destroy the managers in basketball when they have their games,” said Melvin Ejim with a smile. “He just doesn’t let anything affect him, and I think that’s inspirational and admirable.”

For many, it has been.

“What he’s accomplished in his life with being born with a disability is amazing,” Hoiberg said. “I think he’s an inspiration to a lot of people.”

As has always been the case, there is still refining in Loenser’s game. He uses a prosthetic arm only for golf, and while he’s broken a score of 80 and can hit 250 yards straight, he isn’t satisfied.

“My golf game is a work in progress,” Nate said. “It’s funny, I’m 35 and I don’t want to golf like a one-arm golfer still. We’ve still got work to do. We’ll get it right.”

When Nate would ask the kindergarten classroom if they thought he could tie his shoe, a resounding, ‘No!’ would arise. Then, he would do it.

The eyes remain on Nate today. Any doubts have long since disappeared.

“I had eyes. I had people watching me,” Nate said. “The natural tendency is to look at someone different and be skeptical and I always wanted to make sure — selfishly for myself — that I exceeded those expectations.”