No matter how old you are or where you grew up, everyone remembers how nervous they were in high school when they looked at the wall.
You know, that wall where the coach posts who made the basketball team, the theatre director reveals who’ll play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the band director unveils the drum line. For all the electronic advancements in our society, we’re all connected by a piece of paper and Scotch tape.
Shannon Burris can now attest that the only anxiety that surpasses looking at the wall as a high schooler is looking at the wall on behalf of your freshman daughter.
Shannon had been preparing Seana for Cypress Ranch High School’s swim tryout since Seana was in sixth grade. Cy Ranch coach Richard Carnicle ran a neighborhood summer swim team called Town Lake Wake, and Seana had been one of the hardest-working swimmers for years, even practicing with her own private coach.
But she had a sinking suspicion all those efforts had come up short. Cy Ranch’s swim team had a four-day tryout, and Seana had come home after the third practice, saying Coach Carnicle told her she didn’t have to come back tomorrow. Shannon reached out to Carnicle to make sure Seana hadn’t made a mistake. Nope, Clarnicle said, she’d done everything they’d asked. Now, Shannon had to toss and turn all night, wondering if it had been enough.
Deep down, Shannon would’ve understood if Seana’s Down syndrome kept her off the team. As a parent, she balances the competing wishes of not wanting people to put a label on her daughter, but also not giving her spots she doesn’t deserve. Frankly, her hopes didn’t rise until she scanned the paper and read Seana’s number again and again until the happy tears in her eyes blurred it out.
“I was probably more surprised than anyone to see her name up there,” Shannon said.
Seana had spent her life surprising people. Becoming the first swimmer with Down syndrome at Cy Ranch High School is just the top line of one of the state’s most stacked resumes. Last summer, Seana was selected to represent Team Texas at the 2026 Special Olympics. She has donated her hair five times to Sky High for Kids, an organization that fights pediatric cancer. Over 12 years, people’s donations to cut her ponytails have totaled $85,000. She is also an avid outdoorswoman, serving on the junior committee of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and hunting with organizations such as Disabled Outdoorsmen. In her free time, or what little she has of it, she runs the flag across the field for Cy Ranch football games as part of the “Rowdies” student spirit organization.
“It’s kind of busy a lot,” Seana said, in the understatement of the year.
While the schedule demands time management and a never-ending supply of energy, the most important quality is the bravery to put yourself out there. And for that, Shannon looks up to her daughter every day. Most kids find any excuse they can to get out of school. Seana will have a doctor’s appointment that ends at 1:30 p.m. and will plead with her mother to take her back to school just to take the bus ride home. When Shannon took Seana out of school for two days to tour the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, Seana kept asking to go back to Cy Ranch.
“It takes courage,” Shannon said. “She knows she has Down syndrome. She knows it makes her a little different. But something I always tell her is, ‘God creates everybody differently.’”
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