Being a multi-sport athlete can make it hard to catch your breath, yet Highland Baptist’s Brianna Sensley makes it look like a breeze.
"She gives it 100 percent at everything that she does,” Carol Sensley, Brianna’s mom and Lady Bears basketball head coach, said. “Because of that, she's been very successful at the things that she's earned."
Sensley is the captain of the Lady Bears basketball team, has competed in the state track meet for multiple events, and is signing to play college volleyball with Dillard University.
"It's been very rewarding,” Brianna said. “It's been very fun. I've been playing varsity sports since I was in 7th grade."
As Sensley's high school career winds down, she has little time to exhale which is something that she's not really used to doing.
Not only is it because she's always busy playing sports but also because, since birth, Brianna has had asthma.
"I've been dealing with this my whole life,” Brianna said. “It's something that I've gotten used to and just accepted it as a part of my life."
On top of her asthma, Sensley contracted COVID-19 on two separate occasions. As a result, she now has exercise-induced asthma.
"It was scary in the beginning,” Brianna said. “They were saying that the worst people to catch COVID were people with asthma."
"The only thing that mattered was to see my daughter pull through,” Carol said, “I was praying and knowing that tomorrow is not always promised."
Like everything else, Sensley blew by the virus, she got back to work in the classroom and currently has a 3.5 GPA.
During this season, she became a 1,000-point scorer, and she hopes that her story will be a breath of fresh air to someone else.
"I think going through it (COVID-19) myself, going through the journey of asthma, and having to be on inhalers and medicine definitely opens people's eyes,” Brianna said. “It lets people know there is hope, and there's nothing they can't overcome."
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