He came to Minnesota from Mexico’s narco capital. Now he’s a star in college wheelchair basketball.

MARSHALL, MINN. – Just as Southwest Minnesota State’s wheelchair basketball team began its season in November, Emmanuel Fuentes Cervantes, the reigning national collegiate player of the year, came into his coach’s office.

“My mom almost got kidnapped today,” he said.

“What?” replied his coach, Derek Klinkner.

The coach knew of his star player’s difficult situation when he was recruiting him four years ago. Klinkner had seen a Facebook clip of Fuentes spinning circles around everyone else in his wheelchair. “I live in Mexico,” Fuentes wrote in their first exchange on Facebook Messenger. No matter: Klinkner needed an athletic player, someone with star potential, to anchor his team. With fewer than two scholarships to dole out, Klinkner rolled the dice on a player whose hometown of Culiacán was the epicenter of the Sinaloa drug-trafficking cartel.

That November day, Fuentes' city of a million people was a couple months into a bloody battle between the cartel’s two factions. The spark had come in August, when a veteran cartel leader nicknamed El Mayo was allegedly kidnapped by a son of the former cartel leader known as El Chapo. Both were taken to the U.S. and arrested. The ensuing power struggle has killed nearly 1,000 people in the city since September, enveloping bystanders in the violence.

Soon, the 23-year-old Fuentes, who has thick jet-black hair and was born without a left foot, had a decision to make. His mom suffers from persecutory delusions, or extreme paranoia that others want to harm you. She asked him to move her from Culiacán to Durango, 300 miles inland, where his sister lives. Her delusions about being kidnapped weren’t real. But they’re close to reality; that day, a kidnapping had happened on her block, and she heard shootings daily.

“We have to talk to her about nobody is chasing you, nobody is going to attack you,” Fuentes said.

So on Dec. 18 — in the middle of a season where his team had started 6-1, and as most Southwest Minnesota State students settled in for winter break — his coach drove Fuentes to the Twin Cities. Fuentes boarded a flight to Mazatlan then headed back to one of the most dangerous cities on earth.

Southwest Minnesota State has an illustrious history in wheelchair basketball. Of the 11 schools in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association’s intercollegiate division, the Mustangs have one of the oldest programs, founded in 1969, and have won three national titles.

The campus attracts students with disabilities. Built in the 1960s, long before the Americans with Disabilities Act, campus buildings are connected via tunnels and enclosed walkways, with excellent accessibility on the virtually barrier-free campus.

Klinkner came from a small town in South Dakota to play football here in 2007. He suffered a spinal cord injury after his junior year, but with the bad luck came the good luck of attending a rare school with wheelchair basketball. He picked up the sport quickly, served as a graduate assistant, and then took over as head coach in 2013. (Klinkner also works as an admissions counselor.)

It’s not always easy to attract top talent to a farm town in southwest Minnesota when other options include warmer climes such as Tucson or powerhouse athletic programs like Alabama.

Klinkner went after Fuentes hard. Fuentes was born missing his left foot and with a club foot on the right. Doctors told his mother he’d never walk. “She said, ‘No, I’m going to take him to the United States,‘” Fuentes recalled. Seven surgeries in the U.S. fixed his right foot, and he wears a prosthetic on his left. He walks with a slight hitch, only using a wheelchair for basketball. His dad pushed him. “You want to be good, you want to be fast?” his dad would say. “Run to the top of that hill.” He pushed his wheelchair up that hill every morning for a half hour.

When Fuentes visited Minnesota, he thought the university was in the Twin Cities.

“At the airport, Klink told me, ‘Now we’re going to drive three hours to Marshall,’” Fuentes said. “I thought it was going to be another big city. Then I saw less and less houses, more farms, and I thought, ’Where is he taking me?‘ But as soon as I saw the facility, it was like a dream.“

He was a real college athlete at a real American college, with a dedicated court, weight room and dining hall. It was a school that, with a scholarship, he could afford. And he fell for small-town life. He loved the peace and quiet and nights without hearing gunshots.

On the court, Fuentes impressed. He‘s a 4.5 classification player, the most able-bodied group. Players have a range of disabilities, from agile players like Fuentes to players with a 1.0 classification, meaning disabilities that significantly affect physical activity. A five-person lineup cannot exceed 14 points, so teams must be rounded out with a variety of classifications.

His coach foresees a future where Fuentes plays professionally in Europe. His first full year he made the league’s all-rookie team. Last season he averaged 22.4 points, 13.8 rebounds and 8.8 assists as national player of the year. This year he’s played just as well, with his team having a real shot in the national championship tournament this week at the University of Illinois.

“We’re as good as we want to be,” Klinkner said. “We can play with anyone and everyone.”

For a while over winter break, Klinkner worried that Fuentes wouldn’t return. He wasn’t responding to his coach’s messages. With each passing day, his coach worried more.

After landing in Mazatlan, Fuentes hopped on bus to Culiacán. His hometown had changed. Instead of partying late with friends, he didn’t stay out past 7 p.m. “It’s a happy place, as long as you have nothing to do with those people,” he said. One day, after playing hoops with friends, Fuentes returned to a crime scene: A man murdered a couple blocks from his home. “It kind of gets normal,” he said.

He packed up his mom and her stuff for a seven-hour bus ride to Durango.

“I have a prosthetic,” Fuentes reasoned. “I was wearing shorts. If something happened, they weren’t going to kill a guy with a prosthetic. Right?”

To Klinkner’s relief, Fuentes got back to Marshall a few days after the new semester began. By the end of the regular season, his team was 13-8, good enough for a five-seed at this week’s national tournament. Their record would have been even better if not for a few mental mistakes. “Sometimes we lose focus,” Klinkner said.

On a recent morning, Fuentes awoke at 6 a.m. in his dorm room, which is decorated with Spiderman memorabilia and pictures of famous Mexicans. He’d been up past midnight studying for a cell biology exam. Practice started at 6:30 a.m. sharp.

The team circled up: “Mustangs on 3! 1, 2, 3, MUSTANGS!”

They sprinted up and down the court in chairs, Fuentes leading the way. The team’s manager, Megan Olsem, worked the clock; she was the only person in her small-town Minnesota high school in a wheelchair. This team had given her a community. She admired Fuentes' attitude, his teamwork: “He’s the one player everyone tries to be like.”

Players paired off for a chair-skills drill, pulling their chairs backwards, pivoting on a dime, spinning, then jetting forward. Klinkner marveled at Fuentes' chair skills: “Not many people in the division can do what he does in the chair. How he maneuvers around people, almost over people, it’s so smooth.”

They played intense 7-minute scrimmages. Wheelchairs smashed against each other; the game may be ground-bound, but it’s intensely physical. The gym smelled like rubber tires and burnt skin from players’ hands, calloused and beat up from stopping and starting their chairs. Sometimes they use superglue on blisters.

Fuentes' skills stood out: His speed and agility and scoring ability, certainly, but also the way he keeps teammates involved. Opponents focus so much on Fuentes that space opens up for teammates. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a player like him,” said his Argentinian teammate, Fermin Wingerter. “When he gets hungry, you’re in trouble.”

His teammates are aware of his situation back home. Fuentes talks about it but doesn’t focus on it. Everyone on this team has faced challenges. They know sports are a means to success in life, not the end itself.

“There’s this view with disabilities that you’re either the hero or the victim,” said teammate Robert Lew, paralyzed in a snowboarding accident at 19. “Society either raises us up — ‘You’re amazing and inspirational!' — or it’s, ‘Aw, I’m so sorry that happened.' But everyone is adapting to something. Everyone’s got problems. You can just see my problems, because I’m rolling around in a wheelchair.”

As Fuentes heads to the national tournament, he knows their championship window is open this season and next, since Fuentes and other key players have one more season remaining. If the Mustangs play team basketball, they have a chance. Fuentes is hugely competitive but also has perspective: This, after all, is just sports. Other things matter more. He’s sad seeing what’s happening to immigrants in the United States, but he’s confident he’ll be fine, his F-1 student visa lasting until he graduates next year. He’s torn up about his hometown, but he hopes the violence will dissipate.

Anyway, his biggest dreams don’t revolve around basketball. He wants to play professionally in Europe to see the world. He wants to get his masters degree in physical therapy.

And, someday, he wants to return home, to a more peaceful Culiacán. He wants to open a physical therapy clinic and work with elite athletes and people with disabilities. And he wants his mom back home, too, so he can be right by her side.