From Youth Today:

Laila Kindness became a true Shark the first time she flipped her chair in a wheelchair handball game. Or at least that’s what the coaching staff of the Houston Sharks assured her and her mother, Simone. 

“I just lost three years of my life,” Simone Kindness recalled of her shock watching from the stands as Laila, then 10, fell to her side on the court. “That was one aspect that nobody prepared us for.” 

Laila’s first flip was one of many athletic milestones for the 12-year-old in the past two years. She was born with developmental bilateral hip dysplasia that has required multiple surgeries and will eventually lead to hip replacements. 

Simone Kindness had long presumed that sports weren’t a possibility for her competitive eldest daughter, who grew up watching her three siblings play soccer from the sidelines. But in fifth grade, a coach from the Sharks, which organizes wheelchair handball, basketball, and football teams for students in Houston County, Georgia, came to Laila’s class and asked if she wanted to join the team. Now she’s a three-sport athlete for one of the most prolific adapted sports programs in the state.

“There really wasn’t a sport that she could play,” Simone Kindness said. “She could not keep up with her peers. And then here we are, a couple of years later, after many tears and having to say no, and she’s able to play on a varsity team with high school kids and middle school kids.”

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