Brush High School sophomore Lynndale Glover has been a fighter since the day he was born. He was born with Alagille’s Syndrome, a chronic liver disease that affects different parts of the body.
Initially, Lynndale had gone into the hospital at around ten months old, his mother, Sherjewel Clark, who adopted him recalled. “It didn’t look like he would come out of the hospital.”
He made it out of the hospital, but doctors did not think he had a full life ahead of him. They predicted he would never walk or talk, but Lynndale tried and succeeded thanks to a natural gift he discovered early on in life.
“Early on he took a love to music…. and that is how we helped him to walk, and we helped him to start to talk,” Clark explained. “He plays drums actually, and he can just pick up a beat, and he can run with it.
As Lynndale got older he wanted to run on the basketball court but his health condition prohibited from playing organized sports. But this year that all changed.
“Every single doctor's appointment he would ask ‘Can I play today?' Finally, he said ‘yes,’" Clark said with a smile. "He felt he was strong enough to do it and he could do it and he could play.”
Glover added, “I almost cried. I wanted to play one sport, and that was basketball.”
Now he is a member of Brush High School’s junior varsity team. While he contributes on the floor, he remains an inspiration on the sidelines.
“Some of the kids on the team want to give up, but then Lynndale comes to practice and they see that and they are like 'How am I going to give up if he didn’t?'” Brush High School basketball coach Chet Mason explained. “He don’t understand it, but he is a superhero around here.”
And while the season is still going and there are more games to be played, the boy who was born a fighter has clearly already won.
“It makes me happy because he is happy,” Clark said of her son playing basketball.
“That is what he wants to do - he wanted to play basketball."
