A broken neck could not keep Jillion Potter down. Cancer tackled her and she got back on her feet. After all, Potter is a rugby player.
“In rugby, one of the biggest things you learn is resilience and persistence and getting knocked down in a tackle and having to get back up and support your teammates and play the game,” she said. “It’s the same in life.”
Whatever life throws at her, Potter takes in stride.
Six years after breaking her neck in a friendly against Canada and less than two years after her cancer diagnosis, Potter was one of 12 players named to the inaugural U.S. Olympic Women’s Rugby Team last weeks.
Rugby is returning to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1924, but women have never competed in the sport on the world’s biggest stage.
The official Rio 2016 website has already featured Potter prominently under the headline “Indestructible.”
Diagnosed with Stage III synovial sarcoma in August 2014, Potter underwent her last chemotherapy treatment on Jan. 19, 2015, and her last radiation was on March 31, 2015. By last October, she had made the U.S. rugby team.
Throughout treatment in which Potter had four days of chemotherapy every 21 days, she resolved to keep her mindset as an athlete, instead of identifying as a patient. But Potter allowed that after her first stint, “every time I had to take the car ride, I would just cry in the passenger seat the whole way to the hospital. But then once you're there, you put your game face on.”
At the University of Colorado Hospital near her home in Denver, Potter draped her USA jersey and shoulder pads onto her IV pole, then pushed it as she and wife Carol Fabrizio took their daily walk.
“It would take me forever but we would do it,” Potter said, “and if it was snowing, then we would do a bike workout or yoga, but I always had to do some sort of activity before the chemo started.”
Potter has been unstoppable ever since she was a kid.
To read the full article written by Karen Rosen, please visit Team USA.
