When international visitors land at Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport, they'll be introduced to 16-year-old Brinnley Lisenby from Tomball. She is back playing soccer after taking a year off fighting and beating blood cancer with the help of Texas Children's Hospital.
"Everything that I've learned from my experience, I feel like it's almost helped me to mature more," Lisenby said.
For Lisenby, soccer has been a big part of her life since she was a little girl.
"It's really the only thing that I've ever known," she said. "The first sport that I ever played."
"What do you enjoy the most out of soccer?" ABC13 asked.
"I like getting to see people and play with my friends and be able to create connections on and off the field," Lisenby said.
So, imagine being an active 14-year-old who ran around and scored goals on the field, and out of nowhere, you are really faced with the biggest challenge of your young life.
"In the fall of 2024, I had, like, rashes all my shins," she said. "We thought it was just from my shin guards. At the end of September, I was sick, and it wasn't really getting better, and so my parents took me to urgent care. They did a CBC, which is a complete blood count, and then from there they took me to Texas Children's and diagnosed me with leukemia.
"And so when they told you that, what was going through your mind?" ABC13 asked.
"I think at first I was scared just because when you think of cancer, you think of something bad. So even though like it was scary at first, I just always had the mindset that I knew I was going to be okay and then I didn't have to worry about anything," she said.
She was treated at Texas Children's, where she took five rounds of chemo, which had her in the hospital for six months.
"It was just hard being away from home and being away from my dog, and just having to spend that much time in the same room for like a month at a time was really hard," she said.
Right at seven months, she rang the bell, which signaled she was cancer-free and time to focus on getting back on the field. So back home, under the watchful eye of her beloved dog Max, she began her comeback.
"I knew that after I would go to the rehab and get back to everything, as long as I worked hard," Lisenby said.
"You worked hard?" ABC13 asked.
"Yes," Lisenby said.
Lisenby made her return to the field just 2 months of hard work. She just completed her sophomore year on Tomball's soccer team after O'Brien made her comeback, earning all-district honorable mention. Quite an accomplishment considering where she was just a year before.
"I think it really showed my resilience and the motivation that I have to get through things and that I can do anything that I put my mind to," Lisenby said.
To highlight her incredible fight and her biggest win of her life, Texas Children's has included her story in a display for international visitors who are watching their favorite soccer heroes in the World Cup.
"They're going to think that they're seeing some superstar soccer players' cleats," Jennifer Sanders of Texas Children's said. "What they're going to see is something much more meaningful. It's one of our Texas Children's superstars and one of our patient heroes who has been through an incredible journey, and it serves as a great reminder to all of us that each of these children has hopes and dreams that we're fighting for together."