Jennifer Goldsberry mixes sports with a busy class schedule

Jennifer Goldsberry is no stranger to competition. She lives for it.

At Parkway South High School in suburban St. Louis, Goldsberry, now a student at Southeast Missouri State University, played basketball, soccer and volleyball. She was captain of each team at one point, and she received MVP honors as a freshman in soccer, the only year she was able to play that sport due to two torn ACLs.

Her first ACL tear was as a sophomore during volleyball season. She was told she had nine weeks of recovery time but made the most of it by signing up to swim.

She recovered just in time to tear her opposite ACL the next volleyball season, which meant another nine weeks of mostly non-competitive sports. That also meant more laps in the pool.

She finally got her shot at a full volleyball season her senior year, but she was also in love with swimming. So after volleyball and basketball, she decided to swim instead of play soccer.

"Swimming was a big thing for me," she said. "When I tore my ACL, it was the only thing I could do."

She graduated from high school and decided on Southeast. Nothing slowed down, and in fact, her sports schedule picked up with intramural basketball, flag football, ultimate Frisbee, intramural water polo, sand volleyball and indoor volleyball.

"I have always loved playing. I hate to run for no reason," she said. "But give me a ball to chase and I can run forever."

But it is swimming that interests her the most these days.

"It is just an awesome feeling to get in the pool and work your butt off," she said.

She liked the sport so much that she started a swim program at Southeast.

"I needed that program every day," Goldsberry said. "It's a big stress relief, and I have a lot of hard classes."

She actually finds time for school in the midst of all this?

"Oh yeah, I'm going to be a high school teacher in science," she said. "That way I can coach. But I love to teach, too."

Her interest now is maintaining the Southeast swim club.

"The first semester was better; we had about 15 people," she said. "They closed the pool, though, so now we have to go off campus, and it's tough to get people to drive off campus," she says. "Attendance dropped, but hopefully we can get it back up."

If not, surely she will find something else to keep her busy.

"It won't stop," she said. "It's an addiction."