This Liberty soccer player is a special Type of kid

Last March Kylan Crafts Thimmig threw his hands up in the air because he didn’t know what was wrong.

“I have always been relatively healthy kid so I was like, I don’t think this is like the one for me but I wasn’t really educated about it,” said Liberty junior, Kylan Crafts-Thimmig.

After having blood work done, a few days later, he ended up going to the emergency room for more blood work. This 16-year-old had his life turned upside down when he learned that he has type 1 diabetes.

“I was scared to tell you the truth. I didn’t really understand what it all meant, like what I could do and what I couldn’t do,” said Crafts-Thimmig.

“Went through all the emotions of oh my gosh what happened to him lying in a hospital bed. What are his coaches going to think? What are his friends going to think? Is he going to be that kid with diabetes,” said Kylan’s mother, Tammy Krafts.

“I was pretty afraid cuz I didn’t want to lose my best friend or anything cuz I didn’t know what was going on but I knew he would be okay,” said teammate Jake Price.

Kylan went from taken shots on the pitch, to taking shots of insulin to keep his blood sugar at a healthy level. Kylan wears this monitor on his left arm, to monitor his blood sugar which he can see at any time, thanks to an app on his phone.

Soccer has helped Kylan adapt to the life-altering disease.

“Soccer has helped me a huge ton. It just helps coming out here and being able to just forget about it for a little bit and just play,” said Crafts-Thimmig.

He hopes that he can be an inspiration to younger soccer players who are dealing with type 1 diabetes.

“I feel like if I could do anything to influence younger kids perspective of life, playing soccer with Type 1 Diabetes it would be a huge help to my heart too,” said Crafts-Thimmig.