Lauren Hill cancer, Lauren Hill cancer,Hill is meeting her challenge head on. Now she is challenging others to help fight the cancer that is killing her, so others might live.
Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton and tackle Andrew Whitworth answered the call Tuesday. More will surely follow her inspiring and courageous lead.
The Mount St. Joseph freshman basketball player, stricken with a rare and deadly brain tumor, is determined to use the few weeks she has left to raise awareness about pediatric cancer.
Lauren, 19, challenged Dalton, Whitworth and a handful of NBA stars to play like her. That means imitating her determination to play in her first college game despite the adverse effects her cancer has had on her basketball skills.
Lauren's brain cancer has sapped her strength and coordination and forced her to shoot with her left hand instead of her right. Also, she can't turn her head side-to-side because it makes her dizzy, so she has to move her entire upper body.
Lauren got the idea to combine those disadvantages in her challenge campaign called #Layup4Lauren.
"Since she has to compete with dizziness and shoot with her non-dominant hand, the challenge is this: You have to spin around five times and shoot with your non-dominant hand," Mount St. Joseph coach Dan Benjamin said.
In a video released Monday, Hill makes a left-handed layup and challenges LeBron James, Spud Webb, the Dallas Mavericks, San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon, her high school basketball coach and Dalton and Whitworth.
If they make the layup, they can challenge someone else. If they fail, they donate $10 to cancer research.
Dalton and Whitworth passed the test. Dalton then challenged the University of Kentucky basketball team and Whitworth challenged the University of Cincinnati and Xavier squads.
Hammon, the first full-time paid female assistant coach in the NBA, tweeted that she was in, too. She then called out Danny Green of the Spurs and NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal.
Hill has been practicing hard – as much as the large mass in her brain will allow - just to play Sunday in a Division III game against Hiram College. She has been looking forward to her first college game like any other first-year player while knowing – unlike the others – it may also be her last.
The Lawrenceburg High grad recalled Monday how she reacted when the doctors gave her the bad news.
She already knew she had a rare, terminal cancer - now she was finding out she didn't have as much time as she thought.
She remembered thinking:
"I hope I can make it to a game, you know, because I just gotten an MRI and they gave me a shorter time limit - until December," Hill said.
"So that kinda stunk."By now, everyone knows how this brave 19-year-old is staring down the biggest, baddest shot blocker of all.
She broke into laughter with Benjamin during Monday's drills. She chatted with teammates and smiled. Somehow, she puts aside the thought of dying - and the painful headaches from her tumor - to try to enjoy each moment.
Everyone wants to share Lauren's special moment Sunday. The game at Xavier's Cintas Center sold out in 30 minutes.
Hill didn't expect to become a symbol of hope and bravery. ESPN is following her all week leading up to the game.
"I kind of expected it to stay like a little community story about a girl with a brain tumor that's terminal. I never expected it to get this big," she said.
But now that it has, she is using her platform to draw special attention to her cancer - Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG).
DIPG is resistant to chemotherapy and survival is rare. But so are the cases - only about 300 new cases in the U.S. each year - so funding for research goes lacking.
"Spreading awareness has been my goal throughout this whole thing," Lauren said. "I wanted to help kids because I feel so terrible that this is happening to a lot of people and nobody knows about it.
"This is good for the future. It's really good to get things moving."
Hill knows she can't beat DIPG, so she's going to do the next best thing.
"I just can't believe the impact this is going to have and I'm really proud of how far it's come and how many people we're going to help and how much funds this is going to raise and how much awareness for pediatric cancer, because it needs it," she said.
"Only 4 percent of every dollar goes to pediatric cancer."
