The true love for sport can bring people beyond every barrier in our path.
Today we would like to tell about Lauren Hill, the 19-year-old’s basketball player who died because of a rare form of inoperable pediatric brain cancer in April 2015: she refused to give up when others might have retreated from the pain and, despite all this, she decided to devote her time and energy to raise money to help others afflicted with the same dreadful disease.
Hill was just another high school student getting ready for college after she had decided to play basketball at Mount St. Joseph. She had started experiencing dizziness while playing for her high school team in nearby Lawrenceburg, Indiana. A few weeks later, she had been diagnosed with Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG) shortly after her 18th birthday in 2013, trying to defy doctors’ expectations that she would not live past December.
But there was just one dream that Lauren wanted to make true before dying: playing basketball at Mount St. Joseph’s basketball team. This is why the NCAA granted permission to move the school’s opening game forward because of her worsening condition, and on November 2, she realized her dream of playing for the school.
Lauren scored the first and last baskets of the team’s 66-55 victory over Hiram College in that match. After that, her conditions didn’t allow her any more to keep playing and she became the honor coach of the team.
‘It’s a dream come true,‘ she commented. ‘To play on a college court, to put my foot down on the floor and hear the roar of the crowd – I just love it so much. I love basketball.
Although her disease was advancing getting faster, she continued to be strong and raise awareness for her cancer, in the end raising $1.5 million.
In June 2015, Lauren’s memory was honored with a brick in the courtyard of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame: a brick is inscribed with her name and the word “Hero”.
#SportValues #GetVal #Willingness