Baylor student overcomes amputation to make BU Spirit Squad

While cheering on the sidelines at Baylor’s first home football game this fall, Baylor Spirit Squad member Brooke Walker couldn’t help but feel a cascading swirl of emotions. A little over three years ago, the Baylor junior and competitive cheerleader didn’t know if she would ever be able to cheer or tumble again.

During her junior year at Rockwall-Heath High School near Dallas, Walker experienced a persistent pain in her left leg, which turned out to be an arterial blood clot above her ankle. Surgeons tried to save her foot, but complications arose, and doctors had to amputate her left leg below the knee.

Walker spent a month in the hospital, underwent additional surgeries, and began the difficult process of rehabilitation. While adjusting to life as an amputee, she learned to use both an everyday prosthetic leg and a specialized athletic prosthesis designed to help her eventually return to tumbling and cheerleading. Through it all, she leaned heavily on her faith, her dad Anthony and mom Kerri (both Baylor graduates), her twin sister Bella Kate, and a strong support network of friends, teammates, coaches, nurses and others who helped her navigate the unexpected setback.

“No one can control what happens to them, but they can control how they deal with it — how they come back and how they show themselves to the world and how they trust in God’s plan through it all,” Walker told Dallas/Fort Worth’s NBC 5.

Before trying out for the Baylor Spirit Squad, Walker worked relentlessly to regain her strength and build back her powerful tumbling. At the end of the spring semester, she made it through three intense rounds of tryouts before getting the text message that made all she had gone through worth every tear, every struggle and every doubt: “Congratulations! Welcome to the Baylor Spirit Squad!”

“It was hard for me to believe,” Walker says. “I was speechless. Silent. It had been my dream for three years. I thought I would never tumble again.”

On her first gameday before the Bears’ home opener vs. Prairie View A&M, Walker was so “antsy” that she was dressed in her Baylor cheer uniform three hours before needing to be at McLane Stadium. The emotions were running high as she cheered, performed stunts and elevated school spirit, all while her family watched in tears from the stands.

“I’ve come so far from the girl in the hospital who couldn’t even sit up, who didn’t have the strength to walk across the room with crutches, to a 10-hour day cheering on the Baylor Bears,” she says. “I’m proud of the story I get to tell and share with others.”

Sic ’em, Brooke!