SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When Boston Costley stepped onto the Inderkum High School campus three years ago as a freshman, he had big dreams of excelling in football, but little did he know, adversity was awaiting him.
"I had one seizure my freshman year," Costley said. "And randomly out of nowhere, the first day of school before my junior year I had another seizure and that's what alerted them."
He then received the diagnosis that would change his life.
"That's when they realized there was a tumor in my brain," Costley said. "They called it a cavernous malformation."
Not only was this diagnosis difficult for Costley to digest, but what followed up left him heartbroken.
"I was told I couldn't play football again, which was a huge mental breakdown for me. because I'm like, wow, I have to have surgery and I'm being told I can't do what I love," Costley said.
Due to his family and support of his teammates and coaches, he was able to persevere.
"We're a team," said Inderkum head football coach Reggie Harris. "When one is struggling with something, we come together and find a solution. And what we did is we came together and we prayed and supported one another."
After a successful surgery to remove the tumor, Costley took the next several months to recover and hopefully get back to playing football, but he would then face another setback.
"From there, I started to feel pains in my knees," Costley said. "Now, I'm like 'Dang, my knees hurt.' I end up going to a doctor from there and see I have patella tendon tears in both knees. I just got cleared by my neurologist to play football, I was excited, and another thing tries to bring me down."
In true Costley fashion, he didn't allow it to bring him down. He used his faith to overcome this latest setback, and was eventually cleared by a doctor and neurologist to start playing football again.
Costley said he learned a lot about himself during this process.
"It taught me that there's always a way," Costley said. "This taught me that I'm resilient and can fight through anything. I feel like anything in my future I can get through that. God will always help you through what you're going through."
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