Published: April 27, 2008 12:21 am            

Christian Academy’s Boesing overcomes the odds again

Sarah Boesing doesn’t mind talking about the scars. She even jokes about them.

“It sort of looks like a connect-the-dot or something like that,” she said, laughing about the reminders of her 13 surgeries.

Boesing, a senior at Christian Academy of Indiana, knows that she’s lucky to be not only alive, but out on the basketball court or the softball diamond, and she seems pretty content with her lot in life.

It’s the losses she can’t stand.

“It’s probably a more humbling experience for her than it is for me,” said first-year CAI softball coach Emy Lorigan. “If Sarah gets down, the whole team goes down with her.”

This season, with her physical struggles still lurking but seemingly in check, Boesing has taken on the task of rebuilding the Warriors’ softball program, which returned this season after a two-year hiatus.

And if anyone can pull it off, the person to do it is Sarah Boesing.



REWARDED WITH LIFE

Sarah Boesing’s health has been a matter of public record, eliciting plenty of attention from the community, opponents and, of course, reporters.

Born with a kidney defect, she was given six months to live at the tender age of 11. It was obvious that a transplant would be necessary.

Finally, Susan Botts, who attended the same church as the Boesing family, took the test for computability. A perfect match.

Botts’ gift — a new kidney — saved Boesing. But it also meant she would be on anti-rejection drugs, the cost of such a gift, for the rest of her life.

“I’ll pretty much be on those meds forever,” Sarah said. “But it’s a small price to pay.”

There came a bigger penalty. In November of 2006, five years after the transplant, Boesing was told she had lost part of her immune system function. The drugs, which stopped her body from rejecting the foreign organ by suppressing immune system function, had worked too well.

She could not play sports her entire junior year.

“I grew up playing sports,” she recalled. “I was always running around and doing something. I think it’s played a really big role in keeping me in shape and keeping me healthy. When my senior season came around, I said I wasn’t going to let it beat me this time.”

It didn’t. She played basketball this past fall, working around weekly infusions to boost her immune system, and the effort yielded a public celebration of her tendency to overcome odds.

On April 15 — thanks to a nomination from CAI girls’ hoops coach Tim Coomer — Boesing was awarded the Thomas A. Brady Comeback Scholarship award, granted by The Methodist Sports Medicine Foundation to two college and two high school athletes statewide yearly.

“I was really surprised,” she said. “I didn’t know about the award, or that Coach had nominated me. When I found out, I was confused, but excited.”

The award provided $1,000, as well as a chance to rub elbows with luminaries like keynote speaker Clark Kellogg, former Indiana University great George McGinnis and Indianapolis Colts tight end Dallas Clark.

“Yeah, it was pretty fancy,” she said, still seeming a little surprised over her good fortune.



ANOTHER TOUGH TASK

She credits sports partly with her determination, so it was only natural that her determination for her school to field a softball team this season emerged victorious.

“Sarah is pretty much responsible for getting a team together,” Lorigan said. “Softball is really her first love, so she went out and recruited as many girls as possible. She wanted to play her senior year, and she should get total credit for getting the program reinvented.”

The results have been about what you’d expect from a team in which most of the players have never stepped foot on a softball field. The Warriors have yet to win a game, and recent losses to Charlestown and Crawford County have been lopsided at best.

She doesn’t like to lose, nor even talk about it, but so far Boesing is pretty happy just being out there again.

“We’re a really young team,” she said. “I’ve been trying for the last couple years to play, but we never had enough people. I’m just happy we have a team.”

As for Boesing, one of two seniors and the squad’s unquestioned leader, she says she is feeling pretty good.

She practices and plays games in a large plastic brace to protect her kidney, something that “took a while to get used to.” She does what every kid obsessed with a sport does — play as much as possible.

“She’s our go-to player,” Lorigan said. “Everyone looks up to her. She’s always trying to stay after practice, or putting extra time in at the batting cage.”



PUTTING IT ON THE LINE

As much as softball is in Boesing’s blood, her coach often has to wonder when to try and put the brakes on her captain.

“She has a wonderful attitude,” Lorigan said. “She’s out there diving after balls more than anyone on the team. Mostly, that’s because she’s played more than them and not because they aren’t putting in as much effort. But even in practice, she’ll dive after everything and put her body on the line.”

Boesing is making the most out of her second season of varsity softball, and with a team and a new coach came another chance for a girl who has rebounded every time life has thrown her an unhittable curve.

“I said, ‘Sarah, you can play softball at a small college,’” Lorigan recalled. “I don’t know if she’d thought about it before then. And now, she just always wants to stay after practice and keep working on things. Sometimes, I’ll have to tell her ‘just one more bucket,’ because she always gives so much.”

Boesing will likely attend Anderson University in the fall to pursue a degree in nursing. She’ll, of course, try to get a spot on the softball team.

In the meantime, Boesing will continue to do all the things that have made her special to so many people. She’ll continue to try and resurrect CAI softball.

She’ll continue with her Break the Gray ministry, a project she started two years ago to help reach out to patients with chronic illnesses at Kosair and Riley children’s hospitals. She is coming off a big victory there, as the project has expanded beyond the holidays to help families in their day-to-day activities.

“We really just want to give them a break from the mundane routines of that kind of life,” Boesing said.

It’s a life she knows all about, and she’s got the scars to prove it.



SARAH BOESING

SCHOOL: Christian Academy of Indiana

GRADE: Senior

SPORTS: Basketball, softball

COACH’S COMMENT: “We’re a young team with a lot of underclassmen, and she has to be our coach on the field. We need her to look out for the younger players and encourage them and she does that. Everyone looks up to her.”

— Christian Academy softball coach Emy Lorigan



More awards for Boesing

CAI senior Sarah Boesing is one of five finalists in Lt. Governor Becky Skillman’s Hoosier Rising Star competition, which recognizes Indiana youth for community service.

She was chosen as a finalist by Skillman based on her work with Break the Gray, an organization she founded to collect toys, gifts and other items for hospital parties for children with chronic illnesses.

For more details on the Hoosier Rising Star competition, visit www.in.gov/lg.

        

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