The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1215393
22 ■ THE WOLFPACKER that has stayed with the family ever since. Her father, Dan, a sergeant in the Greensboro Po- lice Department, was goofing around in front yard with his son, Will, playing football and other favorite activities. They moved on to driveway bicycle tricks. When Dan tried to jump a rock at the bot- tom of a hill, he flew over his handlebars and landed head first into the ground. "Tell mommy to call 9-1-1," Dan told his son. The fall broke a rib and five vertebrae. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He re- gained some movement after moving to a therapy center in Atlanta and spending a sum- mer in a Raleigh rehab center. He learned to take some steps again and regained limited use of his both arms. He can now stand on his own for the national anthem and clap for pregame introductions at Reyn- olds Coliseum. His accident didn't stop him from enjoying Will's and Elissa's childhoods, watching them play paintball in the backyard or with the other kids in the neighborhood. He still took them turkey and deer hunting and taught them to make a proper fire. He taught them how to mow the family's one-acre yard, and follow up with a hard edge on the sidewalk with a weed- eater. He taught them to enjoy nature and how to change the oil in the family car. "I love to make birdhouses," Dan Cunane said. "Elissa always helped. How many teen- agers know how to use a pneumatic nail gun or a chop saw?" He learned to drive again, and took Elissa to her middle school, AAU and high school practices until she could drive on her own, which he taught her to do as a 6-year-old on a golf cart given to the family after his accident. "She doesn't see disabilities," said An- tonelli, herself the mother of a special needs son. "She sees different abilities." Elissa learned just as much from her mom, Sharon, an advertising manager, though it was more the indoor arts of cooking, couponing and shopping. When she has time around a busy schedule, she still prefers to make din- ner for her roommates and whatever team- mates show up at her apartment, maybe a nice shrimp Alfredo or Italian squash pie, with homemade monkey bread for dessert. So Elissa remembers hers as a perfect child- hood. "There was this one day I do remember where I was filling out a college recruitment questionnaire, probably my freshman or soph- omore year," she said. "The question was, 'What is one thing you would change about your life?' I couldn't think of anything." So she asked her parents, who thought the answer was perfectly obvious: to have a father who didn't need a wheelchair. "I was like, but I wouldn't change that," she said. "There's so many things that I've learned and I have knowledge of because of that, that I wouldn't give that up. "Yes, I would love to have this life with a healthy dad and being able to do all those things with him, but this life is also pretty great. It might be sad when you think about the essence of it, we all have positive attitudes about it. And so I think that for me it's just always been okay, that's life." For her parents, the reward is in seeing how their daughter shares her joy with others. "I was up here [in Reynolds Coliseum] a couple of games ago and a young girl who was 7 or 8 was holding up a sign with Elissa's name on it," Dan Cunane said. "I had never seen something like that before at a women's basketball game. "It was just this little girl showing her ap- preciation. It was so cool to see." A Bright Future Elissa recently changed her major from animal science to conservation biology. She would like to work in environmental educa- tion. "I think that with conservation biology I could work in a national park helping with education, advocating for the animals and for climate change," she said. "There [are] just all the different things that are going on in the world right now that not a lot of people are taking action towards, but know that that's going on." Elissa never really watched television or Cunane has paced the Wolfpack in scoring in 15 of the season's first 27 games and led the team in rebounds 17 times during that span. PHOTO BY KEN MARTIN " I think the No. 1 thing for me in basketball and in life is to have fun and enjoy what I'm doing. " Cunane