Bangor - 11-year-old Alexa Jarvis is pretty good with her hands. If you give her a bottle of nail polish, she can paint you ten perfectly mismatched fingernails, all the while showing off her penmanship.

"I wrote Alexa rules," she exclaimed.

But what she's willing to bet on is what she can do with her legs.

Alexa joked, "They're all going to laugh at him."

"Him" is her soccer coach, Wayne Harvey, who made her a deal after a cancerous bone tumor was removed from her right leg last November.

Harvey said, "She's gone though a lot and she has been offered a number of different things to get her to walk, to get her to take, to get rid of the crutches and take steps on her own, and nothing was working."

But a proposal he came up with seemed to inspire her to take the first steps towards recovery.

"You pick a date, and if she does it, I'll let her paint my nails and I'll wear them on air. She loved the idea," said Harvey.

The chosen date was September 17, Alexa's birthday, and about a week later, she was practically running.

Harvey said, "It's one of those ones, if she can do this, we can get over anything else."

Her parents, Jim and Diane Jarvis, said there are still rounds of chemotherapy and rehabilitation left, though, but their kid is someone you can bet will take it in stride.

The proud duo said, "She's very strong willed, lots of determination. So, we know that eventually she'll be back to the way she always was."

Harvey will show off his nails on air during the WABI morning show, Thursday.

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