Most children grow up having parents who catch them when they fall, telling them to reach for the stars and cheering them on as they grow up. Those were luxuries that Kaylee Clark was never afforded.

 

       “When I was young I didn’t have parents because they weren’t there,” Clark said. “They just left.”

 

       As a very young person Clark and her family were actually very well off but all that changed when her father lost his job. With the family down on their luck and without either parent working, times got hard Clark said.

 

       Clark’s parents began coming in and out of the picture and finally around age eight, her parents got involved in heavy drug usage and one day they just up and disappeared.

 

       “They left the food stamp card on the table and that’s all,” Clark said. “We were living in a house with no water or electricity and that’s how we lived for a while.”

 

       At age 10 Clark found a home again when she moved in with her older sister who had a place of her own with her own children. For a short time, things started to feel normal again but that changed one day when Clark came home to her sister crying in the living room.

 

       “I came home from practice one day and she told me I had to go to foster care,” Clark said. “My parents had been caught taking drugs with my little brother, like he was doing drugs with them.”

 

       At age 11, Clark was officially taken away from her parents’ and was put into state custody, where she stayed in foster care. For five years Clark stayed in foster care. In an overcrowded two-bedroom house, with her foster parents’ children, their grandkids and four other foster children where she slept in a tanning bed.

 

       “It wasn’t the best conditions but they kept us fed and put a roof over our head,” Clark said. “It wasn’t the best but I knew other children had it worse.”

 

       During what most would call the worst of times, Clark found safety and content in cheerleading.

 

       To Clark, cheerleading was more than sport or hobby… It was her safety net. Cheer finally gave her a steady foundation and a family of sorts. It surrounded her with friends and coaches who had what was best for her in mind.

 

       At age 15, Clark was finally adopted by her cheer coaches after a three-year court battle when her biological parents quit showing up to court and up parental rights. Unfortunately for Clark, her home struggles did not there.

 

       “Shortly after being adopted by new parents got a divorce and the mom and me moved to Houston,” Clark said. “I hated it.”

 

       Clark decided the summer before her senior year, it was best for her to move back to Oklahoma to finish high school. Living on her own again, working, cheering and going to school Clark struggled to balance everything in her life and things were hard.

 

        One day Kaylee came home to a phone call from her teammate Kyle Nolan’s mother. She was caught off guard when the Nolans asked if she would like to move in with them.

 

        “I knew Kaylee was on hard times and wanted to help her out,” Nolan said. “So I kept mentioning the situation to my mom and she told me to ask her to live with us. I asked her about it quite a few time and at first Kaylee wasn’t sure about the move but finally we got her to visit for a weekend and the rest is history.”

 

         “When I first moved in with the Nolans it was weird,” Clark said. “Kyle already had two sisters and an older brother so it was awkward pulling in another kid, being that kid.”

 

        Despite the awkward entrance to her new family, Clark soon realized how much the Nolans wanted her to be a part of their family. They acted like she was one of their own. They took her shopping for school, got her hair done and bought her prom dress, things she had never had done for her before.

 

       “They really welcomed me with open arms,” Clark said. “They didn’t act like I was just another person there and ignored me like others. It was like I had always been there from the beginning.”

 

        During her time with the Nolans Clark was able to graduate high school, was accepted into Oklahoma State University where made the OSU Cheer team and competed for the Cowboys for four years. While as a member of the cheer team, Clark received academic honors and was apart of the 2014 national championship cheer team.

 

        “Kaylee was always a driving force on our team,” OSU teammate Lindsey Driskle said. “While the rest of us would worry about the dumbest things and would complain about practice, she would always remind us how things could be a lot worse.”

 

        Along with achieving in both school and athletics, Clark has developed countless friendships at OSU though classes and cheer along with meeting her longtime boyfriend Hestin Lamons, relationships she never could have imagined years ago.

 

        “Looking back at everything, it really grounded me,” Clark said. “Growing up and not having a lot of friendships and family it really puts things into perspective now. It makes me makes me want to treat everyone in my life different because I realize what I have now. I want my relationships to last, so I never take any of them for granted.”

 

        “Through everything Kaylee has been through its has given her a great ability to find the best in any situation no matter how bad,” Lamons said. “She is very uplifting and is the kind of person people like to have around in bad situations because she’s been through.

 

        Even with everything in her life so great Clark says her mind occasionally wonders. She thinks about how her life might have been different with parents in the picture, would she and her mom have been close, would she still talk to her siblings.

 

        “I wish I wouldn’t have had to grow up so fast but I never would have changed a thing because it got me to where I am today,” Clark said. “I’m content where I am, I don’t wish I was closer to my real parents, they had their chance to raise us and they didn’t.”