About the Author

       Kara Kester was born in Charleston, West Virginia on February 24,1984. Kara grew up in Princeton, WV with her mother, Linda, father, Mike, and older sister, Beth. When she was four years old Kara began playing rec league soccer and also began dance lessons at Bluefield Dance Theatre.
       Kara attended Princeton Junior High where she continued to dance, played for the school soccer team, played for the girls basketball team, and participated in the choir. Kara only attended junior high for two years because her class was the first 9th grade class moved to Princeton High School.
       In high school she was the captain of the varsity soccer team, danced in Bluefield, and was also on the school dance team. In the summer of 2001 Kara started going to look at prospective colleges, while keeping in mind that she always hoped to continue to play soccer in college. In the first soccer game of her senior year, Kara was injured by a player on the opposing team. Kara was only able to watch her teammates finish the season and was also unable to dance the rest of the year.
       Kara decided in May of 2002 to enroll at Marshall University. She started out majoring in education, but after observing a speech-language pathologist she changed her major to communication disorders. Kara plans to finish her undergraduate degree in communication disorders in the spring of 2007, and then hopes to attend graduate school to achieve her masters degree in Speech-Language Pathology.