After a five minute non-stop conditioning cycle filled with 10 down and backs and individual sprinting, sliding and lunging separators, head basketball coach Bill Gunn grants his players a one-minute water break for their efforts. For 11 of these men, their short walk to the drinking fountain becomes their quest for the Holy Grail. For Christopher Taylor, junior, his inhaler is the only saving grace.

Taylor, 17, has been dealing with the hardships that come with asthma since he was 5 years old. During one of his sister’s track practices, Taylor decided to go on a run of his own. What he did not expect was for his finish line to be in the emergency room.

“I just blacked out,” Taylor said. “When I woke up I was in the hospital. After a few tests, they told me that I had asthma.”
According to Denise Grider, KHS athletic trainer, people with asthma experience shortness of breath, and struggle with chest tightness. For Taylor, the comparison is breath taking.

“My chest gets really tight and starts to burn,” Taylor said. “I can only take short, quick breaths, and as I do that a whole bunch of mucus gets caught up in my throat.”

Although “sports induced asthma” affects a number of athletes, there is little trainers can do to attack this problem. Grider is faced with two problems related to asthma a year and can only give advice to those who come looking for a back-up inhaler.

“We can’t do much to help individuals with asthma,” Grider said. “Inhalers must be prescribed, so all we can say to an individual is ‘Get an inhaler.’”

Justin Byrd, junior, has seen a lot of coughing, gagging and hacking in his two years of play with the left-handed guard. Byrd can account for at least 40 times when Taylor has had something close to an asthma attack.

“He struggles a lot with it at practice,” Byrd said. “When we run a lot, that’s when he starts hacking it up.”

Unfortunately for Taylor, he experiences these asthmatic symptoms four to five times during every practice or game. Not to mention he also runs the 400- and 800-meter dash for the varsity track team.

“I could never do what he does,” Byrd said. “With all the running we do, all the hard work he puts in, he’s a soldier for going through all that.”