LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 FGCU men\u2019s tennis has a new honorary member, and Caleb Ziegelbauer\u2019s path to becoming an Eagle was anything but ordinary.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He was 13-years-old when he survived a rare brain-eating amoeba infection after swimming at Port Charlotte Beach Park in 2022. Four years later, he officially signed with the program through Team IMPACT, an organization that connects children facing serious illness or disability with college teams.<\/p>\n
Ziegelbauer now attends practices and matches, where his sense of humor has quickly made him part of the team.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically I\u2019m like their cheerleader, but they haven\u2019t given me pom-poms,\u201d Ziegelbauer said with a smile.<\/p>\n
His mother, Jesse, said Caleb\u2019s initial prognosis was dire.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe neurologist came in the room and told us that if the diagnosis was correct, that he would not be here in four days,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Years later, Caleb still has a one-liner ready.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the longest four days of my life,\u201d he said jokingly.<\/p>\n
This week, Caleb officially signed with the team and became an Eagle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just grateful that the tennis team took us,\u201d Jesse Ziegelbauer said.<\/p>\n
Now, Caleb is a regular around the program, going to practices and matches while settling into a new sport after previously playing baseball.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun to learn a new sport,\u201d Jesse Ziegelbauer said. \u201cWe\u2019re struggling with this scoring.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesse said they now try to warn other families about the danger of amoeba infections and the importance of keeping water out of the nose, especially with summer approaching and children spending time in warm water and splash pads.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not trying to be an alarmist, but keep your head above the water, use a nose plug, keep yourself safe,\u201d Jesse Ziegelbauer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEE COUNTY, Fla. (WINK) \u2014 FGCU men\u2019s tennis has a new honorary member, and Caleb Ziegelbauer\u2019s path to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,33575,325,115,110],"class_list":["post-210074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-fgcu","tag-lee","tag-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}