You have to admire anyone who has a dream, sets a goal, and works hard and relentlessly to achieve the goal. Just my opinion, but it seems to be more and more common for people to give up easily, just when things get a little difficult, and then throw away any dreams that they may have. It is just too much work, or too big of a sacrifice for most to make. But then you run into people like Paris’s Brailey Forst, who wakes up every day, and goes to work to get to where she wants to be in life. Brailey has a dream of playing collegiately, and she has never been one to shy away from hard work. And it doesn’t end there; Brailey is an outstanding student with a overall grade point average of over 3.80 on a 4.00 scale. So, while she is working out, practicing with her teams, playing scholastic sports of basketball and volleyball, and…playing both sports in travel ball during the remainder of the year…others may be taking it easy, or, taking the easy way out. But Brailey, with all of this going in her athletic life has also been able to effectively manage her time, devoting full attention to her academic responsibilities, even if it means staying up long hours at night after coming home from an evening game on the road.
Does it sound like I am impressed with this Lady Eagles standout? The short answer is, “yes”. But in full disclosure to our readers, I must share to you I am related to her as she is my wife’s granddaughter. I have known Brailey for approximately ten years, and I will publicly share with you that she is an outstanding person, and is someone that I respect tremendously. I respect her work ethic, the good person that she is, and her determination to follow and achieve her dream of playing collegiately in basketball, volleyball, or both.
As part of RNN Sports’s series on outstanding athletes around Logan County and the surrounding communities, I sat down with Brailey last week to interview her for this story. It was a unique experience for both of us; she had never given a media interview before, and as a family member, it was both a treat and a privilege to have the opportunity to listen to her responses and to write her story. It’s not often that you go into an interview anticipating what the respondent’s answers are going to be, but in this case, I knew for the most part how she would answer. But in classic Brailey form, she did not disappoint with her answers; I think you will enjoy her interview.
I started her interview with the question of where do you see yourself, both as a person and as an athlete five years from now? Brailey began by saying, “I see myself in college, but I don’t know what college I am going to go to yet. But, I want to play either volleyball or basketball, and, after that, I really don’t know. Because in five years, I will be in my senior year in college, in my senior year in sports, and that will be the end of my career (playing sports).” So I asked her as a follow-up if she had thought about what she would do after she finishes playing sports. She said, “I think that I am going to go to medical school after I get out of college. That fifth year, hopefully, at Fort Smith (Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in Fort Smith) I will start three years there and then begin my career at probably some local physical therapy clinic and then eventually branch out to other places once I get comfortable.”
With Brailey’s athletic background she would be well-equipped to work in a sport medicine / physical therapy clinic that serves athletes of all levels. She continued to say, ‘I’m looking forward to helping others to get them back to where they were (helping injured athletes recover and rehabilitate their injuries and return to play) after their surgeries, and even if people (patients) are not in sports, helping them get back to at least 95% of what they were doing before.”
If she sounds empathetic for her future patients, it is partly due to the fact that she herself faced an injury situation last basketball season that eventually required surgery, rehabilitation, and now, re-conditioning to return to the sports that she loves. And as hard as the physical aspect of the injury and recovery have been, the mental part of making the decision to shut down and have surgery, and then perserve through the rehab, may have been the most challenging aspects. I asked her to reflect on this, and she shared, “I really didn’t know what to do to either “tough it out” for my team, or, if I needed to help myself and have the surgery now so that I had time to prepare and be ready for my senior year. It took my like two weeks to figure out what I needed to do. It was very tough to figure out what to do.” This was a bout of “tug-of-war” in her mind; weighing the reasons for either having surgery after basketball season, or, ending her season early to have time to rehab and recondition for the summer and the fall volleyball season. So, I asked her, what swayed her decision, and she said, “I had a couple of people that gave me reasons why I needed to go ahead and have surgery and begin the process earlier to get ready for my senior year of sports. And then I had people who were telling me I needed to wait and finish-out the season. So, I kind of put them both side-by-side and I told myself that I needed to prepare for my senior year, because that was going to be the biggest year of my life (for scholarship consideration, for reaching my goal to play college sports, and for anything with my state goals for volleyball and basketball, and I knew my teams needed me more this upcoming year than I did compared to when I first started to feel the pain in my foot. So, I decided I needed to go ahead and have surgery as soon as possible so that I would have a little bit more recovery time, physical therapy, and then in the summer, I would gradually get back to where I was and better than where I was (before the surgery).”
This is an incredibly hard decision for an athlete, especially a high school athlete to make. There were people who both publicly and privately second-guessed her decision to end the basketball season approximately two weeks early in 2022. In fact, there were solid arguments that could be made for either waiting two weeks, or going ahead and having the surgery when she chose to do. Couple with this her love for the game and her self-sense of obligation to her teammates, it was a very tough decision. But, she made her decision, committed to rehab and getting back to practice, and she resumed playing in late-April, early May in both travel volleyball and basketball. Brailey said, “Everyone respected my decision. They probably had different opinions, but I honestly never heard anything bad like I was just doing it for myself. I could be better for our teams next year if I were healthy, but no one came back to me being negative about my decision. I was not 100% like I needed to be, and I couldn’t help my teams like I needed to.”
As an observer of Brailey and her games last year, it was obvious that her pain was increasing each week, and her mobility and effectiveness was decreasing with each game. In her last appearance in basketball at Booneville, she could barely go up and down the floor. She would have surgery the next day, and would immediately begin the next phase of her athletic career. And now, she is back and nearly 100% recovered and has been working hard all summer to regain her playing condition so that she can hit the floor in both sports and help her teams make runs to the state tournaments. No doubt, this is the biggest athletic year of her life, and she wants to play in college, but she is now focused on leading Paris to state tournament runs in both sports.
So now, Brailey Forst is just a few days away from the official start of her senior year. Classes will open on August 15 in Paris, her team’s first regular season volleyball game will be on August 22. I asked her where she thought her volleyball team was at this point of the preseason, and she shared, “I think that we (Paris volleyball team) are gaining confidence in ourselves. After we have played the summer season, summer camps; we are struggling a little bit, but then at that last camp we played at (Greenwood Volleyball Camp) we played pretty well. We’re all coming together as a team. It’s just coming together. I’m confident in what we can do and I am ready for the season. I know everyone else is confident. We believe in ourselves in doing whatever we want to accomplish our goals. We set our goals for the season and for what we want to do. We’re all ready for the season.”
This will be her fourth year as a starter in the Paris volleyball program. At the end of her ninth grade junior high season, she was brought up to the varsity team to play in the senior high district tournament that was held at West Fork that year. She immediately made an impact when she entered the game, so much so, that the Paris crowd that had traveled to Northwest Arkansas to see the Lady Eagles began to chant, “She’s a freshman!” I asked her to recall that moment, and she commented, “They (the underclassmen on this year’s volleyball team) are very nervous. I was very nervous back then. I understand where they are coming from. Because I remember playing with Lauren Earle whenever she was a senior, Alyssa Komp, Akira Robinson, and it was very stressful. So much pressure. We were coming off of a state title, just like this year, and this year, all of our seniors have graduated and they were all starters. So now, it is the seniors this year, and they (the underclassmen) have to come up and fill big roles. There is so much pressure on them, and I feel for them. Lauren Reames, is a freshman, and she has improved so much. She believes in herself and is gaining confidence.” A classic answer for Brailey; I asked her about her own experience as a freshman, and she focused on her current teammates who are underclassmen. She is a team player and will be looked upon to be a leader her senior year.
Club sports and travel sports have been a big part of her development as a player. But it has required her to balance her time between playing, practice, training, and her academic studies. I asked her how she has balanced everything and has maintained such high performance in all areas, especially academically, and she said, “It is very difficult to try to balance everything. My friends and I have talked about this, and it is like, the last period of the day is athletics, you go to practice, you play games, and we have said, “what would it be like if we did not have sports? Would we just go home after school? If we had one extra period to take a class, what would be do?” So, we go to school, go to practice, get out around 6 p.m., may have practice after that in a second sport, or, if you play travel ball, I may have practice after all of that. After that, you get to go home, eat, and do homework or study for tests. I may watch game film, and then, go to bed. There is no down time. You get up, and you do the same thing again.” So, two things here. A student like her has to be intrinsicly driven to want to make such sacrifices and to want to work that hard, and, you have to be very good at organizing tasks and managing time. In my opinion, she has done all of these things well, and they will serve her well in college and for the rest of her life. She continued to say, “Even if I did not play sports in college, I still have to be organized to go to classes, do my work, and get rest to be a good student.”
For the benefit of our readers, I hope I have, with Brailey’s remarks, have shown what an outstanding person, student, and athlete that she is and will be when she goes to college. Her abilities to manage all of her work and time has been a natural act for Brailey. She said, “It has been easy for me. Like, whenever we travel to conference games, we’ll do our homework on the bus. So, we’ll do whatever we need to do to finish up homework when we (teammates) get home. It’s not really been a big issue for me, but you have to keep up with it and know what homework needs to be done first. But once you start to get into the groove, you can do things before games, etc., it becomes a little easier.”
Moving into basketball, Brailey was very complementary to the new Lady Eagles head basketball coach, Jonathan Vire. In speaking about her new coach, she said, “He’s been making a lot of changes and they have been good changes. I’m ready for basketball. Like, I just spoke to him, and he said that for the next three days he would have the gym open at anytime for me and others to come up and shoot.” When I asked her where she thought the Lady Eagles could finish next year in basketball, she said, “I want to go to state. I have been telling my team that we haven’t been to state in basketball for the girls program, and I don’t think I have every been to state (in any capacity) in basketball. So, I have been telling my teammates that we are good enough and have the potential this year that we can make it to state. We just have to listen to our coach and continue to work hard, know our roles, and everything should work out for us.”
It will be a big year for Brailey as she plays her last year of high school ball with the hopes of being recruited and committing to play college sports. In my unbiased (LOL) opinion of Brailey, whoever makes an offer for this outstanding athlete and student to play at their school, they will be getting a great person who will make a positive contribution to any program. She is very independent and goal focused, and has a tremendous work ethic. Whether it is in athletics or in academics, no one will work harder in college than Brailey.
You can’t help to pull for a person like Brailey, but I am confident she will get her shot. But one thing is for sure, Brailey Forst will continue to work hard and will remain focused on her academic studies and career goals.
We wish Brailey all of the best for her senior year at Paris, and we wish her much success as she continues to pursue a college sports career.
