Payton Donley has emerged as a standout athlete for Etowah in both basketball and soccer.

Though being a two-sport letter-winner and earning a soccer scholarship to Troy University may put Donley ahead of her peers, her story is about more than just athletic achievement.

She is one of four children — two of which live every day with a genetic disorder. Her sister, 16-year-old Savannah, and brother, 10-year-old Jacob, have both been diagnosed with Trisomy 9 Mosaicism syndrome, a rare chromosomal disorder in which the ninth chromosome pair in a DNA strand appears three times rather than twice in some cells of the body. The symptoms of the disorder can include growth deficiency, mental retardation, structural heart damage and skull and facial abnormalities.

While the disability many hamper quality of life and create hardship, Payton Donley doesn’t see things that way.

“It’s never been about hardships with my brother and sister,” she said. “My parents taught me to learn from the things that we have been given. … (The disorder) causes them to develop slower. It took them longer to learn to walk and do the things that babies should learn to do before they are 2 and 3. But it’s fun to see them learn how to do what they are able to do.

“Since my sister is so close to (my age) from the time I can remember, I never remembered where life was easier. It was just from the get-go — this was how it is. I’ve been lucky that my parents haven’t looked at it negatively, and not act like it’s a bad thing.”

For Donley, it hasn’t been difficult to find motivation to work harder on the playing field, even after she’s hit thresholds for fatigue and pain.

“If you ever start feeling sorry for yourself or overwhelmed, we kind of put it in terms of, ‘God gave you these gifts,’” said Donley’s mother, Michelle. “‘You need to use them, because not everyone is as lucky as you are to have these talents. Never take anything for granted,’ and she has definitely followed that. She’s a very good kid with her siblings, and it’s wonderful to see the person she has turned out to be.”

And so, instead of it being a distraction, Donley uses her siblings’ disabilities as a way to focus rather than treating them as an excuse.

“They would always ask me what we wanted for Christmas, and we would just say that we wanted them to walk,” she said of Savannah and Jacob. “It was always about focusing on the good things, rather than feeling bad for ourselves. It’s really taught me a lot about accepting people that are different because my biggest thing is that I can’t handle people looking at them funny or treating them worse than they should be treated. With the two of them being disabled, it hasn’t stopped my parents from paying attention to me or my brother, Sam.”

Not only are Savannah and Jacob unable to compete as Payton does, but they also have a hard time even communicating with others. They are unable to clap or yell for their sister when she makes a good play, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t able to gain satisfaction out of seeing Payton’s triumphs.

“With the two of them, when they are happy, you can see them laughing and smiling,” Payton Donley said. “It’s really encouraging to know that, even with the disorder they have, they can still enjoy their lives. They don’t sit around and do nothing. They have personality. They know what’s going on and are doing all of the things that families like to do together.”

In her family, Donley is forced to take on a leadership role in helping around the house. On her basketball team, she is the lone senior after the exodus of all five senior starters from last year’s Region 5AAAAA championship team.

Etowah coach Bob Westbrook has been impressed at how Donley been able to not only handle her home life, but also with how she has been able to deal with leading a team on the floor with few upperclassmen around her to help.

“Payton is a remarkable individual,” Westbrook said. “She has the ability — the rare ability — for a kid that age to mix all of the things that go with being a student with being this responsible individual that obviously helps out around her house because there are a lot of things that most kids would not have to be responsible for at her age that she is. It’s really remarkable to me the things that she has done from that standpoint.”

In addition to her immediate family, Donley’s parents, Michelle and father Trent, are in the process of trying to adopt two more children — two orphaned siblings from Latvia, Aleks, 7, and Kitija, 8. The Donleys heard about the adoption program at their church, from a family who had adopted a 14-year-old girl.

“Actually, a few years ago, they started a hosting program,” Payton said. “Orphans from Latvia come over for a month in hopes that they will get adopted, see America and be a part of the United States. … We are in the process of trying to adopt (Aleks and Kitija). I am excited about them.

“It is crazy and overwhelming, but I enjoy that kind of thing. It’s difficult because they don’t speak English. We have to learn a little bit, and they have to learn a little bit. They pick it up, especially since it’s the third time they have been over here. It’s funny because, at the end, you will hear them come up with phrases like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’ or ‘Oh, man.’”

With the additional responsibility of adopting two kids on top of a family of six, it would seem to make the task of raising so many children seem improbable — if not impossible — but Michelle Donley said that she enjoys having everyone around as part of the family.

“We’ve hosted them three times,” she said of Aleks and Kitija, “and we are in the process of trying to bring them home for good.”