DS Talk » ut she does have this kind of resilience, and she cant

RIO DE JANEIRO --?Chris Langridge and Marcus Ellis are closing in on Britains first Olympic badminton medal for 12 years and hoping to do a Leicester.The last time Team GB made the semifinals was also in 2004 but the doubles act updated that record on Monday when they beat Japans Hiroyuki Endo and Kenichi Hayakawa in straight games 21-19, 21-17.Langridge and Ellis, ranked No. 22 in the world, are now guaranteed to play for at least a bronze medal but the outlook could be even better if they beat Haifeng Fu and Zhang Nan on Tuesday, and a shock title win has entered their thoughts.Our record against the Chinese pair is not as good as we would like but anything can happen, Langridge said. We are going to go out there and hopefully do a Leicester.Its insane really -- if you had told me before the start that we would make the semifinals, I would have bitten your hand off.Langridge, 31, said later the surprise victory over the world No. 8 pairing had been the result of 21 years of hard work.?We are one of these pairs that are quite up and down, added the Milton Keynes-based player. But this tournament we have shown our ability throughout the group and knockout stages.I am not competitive outside of badminton, I would let my missus win at bowling if she wanted to - but not badminton.We give everything on court and you can see from our emotion how badly we wanted it -- it means everything to be in the semifinals. Jack Tatum Youth Jersey . "It doesnt get any better than that," Giambi said. "Im speechless." The Indians are roaring toward October. 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She had to figure the worst part was over, that youre all paid up with someone, somewhere after breaking your neck at 24. But then Jillion Potter woke up and found the swelling in her jaw.She had recovered enough from the frightening rugby injury to not just walk away, but play the sport at a high level again.It wasnt even a tackle, recalled Potter, now 30 and a member of the U.S. rugby team that will compete in Rio as the sport returns to the Olympics for the first time in 92 years. It was definitely a fluke accident. I kind of just got hit from behind, and ... it was absolutely terrifying. I remember saying to my teammate Jamie Burke, Im not going to move. My neck popped and Im scared.That was in 2010, when the fractured C5 vertebra, torn ligaments and ruptured disk that could have paralyzed her didnt. Instead, it made her stronger for a bigger challenge she could not have anticipated.At such a young age, you think youd lose everything, she said of the neck injury. Your whole world is coming down. And so when cancer came, I was just like, All right, here we go again.Potter had just returned from a vacation to Alaska with her wife, Carol Fabrizio, in April 2014 and said her first inclination was to assume the lump had something to do with camping or some other outdoor activity. We just thought it was a virus and kind of blew it off as a sickness, Potter said.When a tumor was detected by an ultrasound weeks later, the results were inconclusive. An MRI revealed that it was slow-growing, and Potter kept on training in France for the 2014 World Cup. But Potters phone calls to Fabrizio back home were alarming.She was talking about how it was getting bigger, Fabrizio said, and I could hear her voice changing, so I knew something was going on. I said, When you get back to the States, you have to go [back to the doctor]. We cant ignore this.After the World Cup, Potter had a 10-centimeter tumor removed. The diagnosis: stage III synovial sarcoma, one of the rarest forms of soft-tissue cancer.Some people say, Well, shes strong enough, shell beat it. But I dont like that because thats not how cancer works, right? Fabrizio said. But I did know she would have the best attitude possible and that shes the best patient. If the doctor tells her to drink 17 glasses of water every day, shell do it. So I knew she would give herself the best chance she could.The treatment plan was chemotherapy and then radiation. Four-day stints of chemo every 21 days. By the second cycle, Potter recalled, she would cry on the way to the hospital. But other than those few moments, Fabrizio said there wasnt a lot of uplifting she had to do.Instead, she remembered how Potter, in the hospital for chemo treatments, jumped up and offered her hospital bed when a visitor needed a seat, and pulled her IV pole, draped with a USA Rugby jersey, while delivering coloring books to the childrens hospital.Thats just her, Fabrizio said. She would always make sure when the nurses came in to ask, How is your day going? She could have been throwing up five seconds before and thats literally her next thing: How was your day? She genuinely cared how that nurses day was going.Your character is how you act when things are hard. Its easy to be a great person when youre on top of the world, but how you act when things are really crappy tells a different side of your story and your character.Potter called it a transition when she lost her hair and her eyelashes. But she admits the little things were tough, like once trying to go into a womens restroom and being told, The mens room is over there.I just ignored it and kept going, she said.It was rugby, Potter said, that taught her about resilience and persistence. A self-described skaateboard chick as a child, she didnt play organized sports until seventh grade, when she started playing basketball.dddddddddddd She wanted to continue playing basketball in college, until she was introduced to rugby as a club sport at the University of New Mexico.Immediately attracted to the physicality of rugby, Potter said she also loved its inclusiveness. In rugby 15s, in particular, if youre tall, if youre stout, whatever, theres a spot for you, she said.There was more than just a spot for Potter, who made the U.S. under-19 team six months after learning the sport, the U23 club six months later, and shortly after that the senior national team.U.S. womens coach Richie Walker said he remembers the first time he met Potter in 2007, when she was playing in her first camp for rugby sevens, a faster, higher-scoring version of the traditional 15-on-15, and the format that will be played in the Olympics.Walker was assisting Ric Suggitt, the head coach at the time, and all four coaches at the camp were asked to rank the 50 or so players by ability.I ranked her No. 1, and the other coaches who had been part of the program for a while started laughing, Walker said. They had other players ranked first for the morning session, but Ric flipped over his paper, and he had Jill Potter as well. The others had picked who they knew and who had been there a while, but Jill was the best player.Walker is still a fan.For me, its just her attitude and how she attempts everything she does, he said. Thats what I noticed in that first training camp. She wasnt scared or shy. It was an unknown situation, and she just played hard and had fun.You take how Jill has handled cancer, and its the same thing. Nothing fazes her. Shes not afraid of any challenge.Though she worried about whether she would be able to return to rugby at the level she had attained before her illness, Potter said she was more concerned about how her coaches and teammates would treat her.Just because Ive had this challenge doesnt make me special or mean I need special treatment, Potter said, who returned after she finished radiation, less than six months after finishing chemo, but would leave the team every three months for tests. The agreement [with Walker] was, Im going to treat you like any athlete, and I was like, I want you to push me even harder.Potter had the same request of her teammates.For the first couple training [sessions], Walker said, the other girls were a bit skeptical and hit Jill really nicely, and Jill would be like, Damn it, hit me, because Im going to hit you.Potter said she relied on her identity as an athlete during treatments -- battling the cancer cells -- and counted on that mindset in her recovery and training.Fabrizio, once an amateur rugby player, remembers Potter struggling on a hill at the end of a run they took together not long after chemo ended.When youre used to being as good an athlete as she is and have a hard time running a relatively short distance, she was having a hard time with it emotionally, Fabrizio said. And I said, Hey, Im not going to be beating you too much longer. She was getting better. ... We ran a half-marathon about eight weeks after she finished treatment, and she was definitely the one setting the pace, and I was dragging along behind her.Asked whether Potter is back to normal, both smile at the word.She doesnt want to be the cancer patient, Fabrizio said. She doesnt want to have that identity. But she does have this kind of resilience, and she cant shake that even if she wanted to. I think shes normal, yeah. I think shes better than normal. ' ' '