First-grader boasts National handwriting award despite having NO HANDS

'She is a vivacious and a no-excuse type of young lady.'

A 7-year-old girl who was born without hands beat fifty other first-graders in a national handwriting competition, proving anyone can do anything they put their mind to.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Rather than accepting prosthetic hands, little Anaya Ellick simply uses her forearms to write, ABC News reported.

After submitting a handwriting entry form for a Nicholas Mazim Special Award for Excellence in Penmanship, in the cognitive, intellectual, physical or developmental disabilities category, Anaya won first place.

"There is truly very little that this girl cannot do," principal Tracy Cox of Anaya's Greenbrier Christian Academy explained. "She is a hard worker. She is determined. She is independent. She is a vivacious and a no-excuses type of young lady."

Competition director Kathleen Wright explained how the judges went over the submissions and were "just stunned" to see Anaya's handwriting.

A spokesman from Zaner-Bloser, the educational company that hosts the competition each year, told NPR Anaya won from the collection of roughly fifty entries this year.

"Her writing sample was comparable to someone who has hands," Wright explained.

Cox added, "She truly has some of the neatest [handwriting] in her class."

Anaya's classmates do not bully her or treat her any differently from other students, and she is able to keep up with them, the school's founder and superintendent, Ron H. White, explained. "I don't think Anaya thinks of it as an obstacle."

Anaya's mother, Bianca Middleton, explained how Anaya learned to balance crayons and markers between her arms after she stopped using prosthetics at the age of five-years-old, adding the prosthetics were "slowing her down more than helping."

Middleton explained how Anaya's positive attitude was inspirational and admitted: "She helps teach me things I take for granted every day, you know, and I look at her like, 'Wow, she's not complaining, never complains."

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