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Senior wheeling her way to hoops scholarship RECOGNIZING GRADS
Wheelchair doesn't limit Culpeper High graduate's athletic careerDate published: 6/9/2008 BY DONNIE JOHNSTON Sonya Ast has spent her entire high school career in a wheelchair. Given that fact, many of her fellow graduates and her teachers are stunned to learn that the likable Culpeper High senior with an infectious smile will be attending the University of Alabama in the fall to play basketball. "I was really surprised when she told me that," says Assistant Principal Mark Settle. "I had no idea she played basketball." Sonya does play basketball--wheelchair basketball--and has since she was 9 years old. What's more, she's so good at the game that she was recruited by Alabama. "It's one of four colleges in this country that has women's wheelchair basketball," Sonya says of Alabama. (Arizona, Illinois and Wisconsin-North Whitewater are the others.) "The coach saw me at a clinic and said, 'Hey, we could use her.'" There followed the usual recruitment scenario--letters, telephone calls, a campus visit and, finally, a commitment. But it was not just basketball that led Sonya to pick the Crimson Tide. "I chose Alabama because it had the degree program [athletic training] that I wanted," she says. "Other schools didn't have exactly what I was looking for." A spot on a college basketball team will be the next step in a long and difficult journey for the 18-year-old senior. While most of her classmates were enrolling in kindergarten, Sonya, who was born with scoliosis, was enduring a hellish life in a Russian orphanage. At the age of 5, she was adopted by Mark and Meg Ast and brought to America to begin a new life. But those first years were trying, with Sonya adjusting to a new family, learning a new language and undergoing seven major surgeries for such birth deformities as a curved spine and clubbed feet. Once past the surgeries and the adjustment period, however, Sonya's life really took off. "Ever since I was little, my parents taught me how to go out into the public and do things," she says. "I learned a lot of independence from them." Sonya has been involved in a multitude of activities. She has been in the high school band, playing trumpet and baritone, been a 4-H camp counselor and swam competitively with Woodberry Forest's school team. She also enjoys making bracelets in her spare time and wants to learn to knit. "I enjoy working with my hands," she says.
Date published: 6/9/2008
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