CONWAY, Ark. (AP) - She only played for a few seconds, but it brought her to tears.
“One completed pass,” Kelsey Johnson yelled one Friday night before exiting the field.
It was an emotional return for a player who’s had to battle back, inspiring her entire University of Central Arkansas team in the process.
In January 2016, the senior midfielder was in a car crash near campus in Conway. She walked away with what she initially thought might be whiplash, but the headaches got worse. She decided to go back to the doctor.
“I went in thinking I had a concussion, so I was like OK, it’s going to be a concussion. It’s going to be nothing else,” Johnson told Channel 7 (https://bit.ly/2fajgH4 ) in an April Beyond the Game story.
After multiple tests, doctors determined the cause of her headaches to be a brain tumor. A month after the story aired, she underwent brain surgery in Houston.
“I couldn’t move my right arm very well,” she said this week. “I couldn’t speak like I’m speaking to you. I couldn’t think, you know how you think automatically? It wasn’t like that at all.”
On top of that, Kelsey is currently halfway through a year’s worth of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
“There’s no easy way to deal with it. I don’t know anybody that can say I just lost half my freakin’ hair on my head and it’s going to be OK. I’m still beautiful.”
Beauty, however, is born from the inside. What’s inside Kelsey is pure toughness.
Driven to return to the sport she loves, doctors eventually cleared her to practice, but she can’t have any contact. She can’t play any games this season.
“I didn’t even believe it,” Kelsey said, frustrated.
Her coaches decided to step in.
On senior night for the UCA women’s soccer team, undefeated in conference play with Kelsey as their inspiration.
“We were talking about what we could do. We said, let’s see if we can get her on the field,” said head coach Jeremy Bishop.
She was introduced in lineups, and she started the game. Kelsey completed a pass, then returned to the bench in tears.
“I’m just ecstatic that it was the best that it could’ve been, out of a brain tumor,” Kelsey said.
“I have a lot of years ahead of me. 100. Maybe more!”
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Information from: KATV-TV, https://www.katv.com/
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