Junior midfield Kathleen O'Connor stood in front of her seated teammates at the 40-yard line of Villanova Stadium on September 16, 2016. She was not attempting to psyche up her teammates before the fall practice, nor was she was not there to discuss a play or strategy to be used for the upcoming season. Some of her teammates knew what she was going to say, while others knew something was up.

With nervousness in her demeanor, O'Connor tapped the Notes app on her iPhone. She proceeded to give a speech she wrote to the team. The speech informed her team she would have to redshirt the upcoming season, because she was diagnosed with cancer.

Kathleen first felt the pain in her shoulder and peck muscle just a week after moving back to school in the middle of August. Not thinking anything of it, Kathleen continued to practice as she contemplated whether the pain was caused from moving-in or if she slept awkwardly on her shoulder.

Two weeks followed and the pain failed to subside. Kathleen saw Dr. Michael Duncan, the Head Team Physician at Villanova University. He gave Kathleen anti-inflammatory pills, thinking the pain had to do with the muscle. The pain grew severe, as passing, catching, and shooting proved too much in practice and forced herself to sit out.

Following Labor Day Weekend, the team re-ran conditioning run tests, and Kathleen struggled to finish.

"I couldn't breathe," explained O'Connor. "I thought I was really out of shape, but it wasn't that. I did three reps and I was literally out of breath and couldn't breathe."

Out of blue, she started to get fevers. She knew something was up.

"I wasn't sick," she continued. "It wasn't winter. Leah Lamborn, our trainer told me to go to the health center with everything going on. I went to the health center that day (September 8) and they sent me home and told me to come back for a follow-up the following Monday."

That Saturday, Kathleen's lymph node popped up near her collarbone. After attending her follow-up appointment at the health center on Monday September 12, the new plan was for Kathleen to receive an ultra sound and a chest x-ray the following day.

After the results of the scans were reviewed, Kathleen returned to the health center and was surrounded by Dr. Duncan, Leah, former Villanova women's lacrosse trainer Stephanie Natalie, and nurses. Kathleen had no idea what was about to happen.

"I was like 'Hey Guys!' not thinking anything of it," said O'Connor. "Dr. Duncan said, it's either a lung infection or lymphoma. I didn't even know what lymphoma was."

Kathleen received yet another test, this time a CAT Scan later that day. That night, Kathleen and her mother, Donna, got called back into the Dr. Duncan's office. He relayed the message to Kathleen and her mother that the radiologist's primary concern was lymphoma.

Kathleen was sent to Bryn Mawr Hospital after a recommendation from Dr. Duncan. The oncologist let Kathleen know that there was only a five percent chance that it wasn't Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The following day, Kathleen underwent a positron emission tomography (PET) scan along with a biopsy. The results were only supposed to take three days, but a week-and-a-half later she was still awaiting the results.

On her way to the University of Pennsylvania for a second opinion, Kathleen finally received the call with the results. Despite all evidence pointing to Hodgkin's Lymphoma, the oncologist diagnosed the cancer as anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL), a rare variation of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL). The diagnosis is so rare in fact that only one percent of all NHL diagnoses are ALCL, according to lymphoma.org.

Doctors recommended Kathleen receive treatment at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), since the pediatric doctors were performing a clinical trial for a new regiment to combat ALCL. The original treatment plan for the Hodgkin's Lymphoma diagnosis would have meant four to six months of chemotherapy once every two weeks. Each individual treatment would have lasted half a day, and then Kathleen would be able to go home.

Instead, the clinical trial treatment at CHOP called for five straight days of inpatient chemotherapy treatments, where Kathleen would have to stay overnight. The plan was to do five days of treatments, followed by 16 days off, so in total to have six different 21 day cycles. The treatments were so intense, that Kathleen received roughly 12 months of chemotherapy in only four-and-a-half months.

Doctors could perform such rigorous treatments due to Kathleen's physical fitness from playing lacrosse.

"My doctors kept saying, 'You're so lucky that you're an athlete, because your body would not have handled it the way it did,'" said Kathleen of her doctors. "The doctors didn't necessarily stage the lymphoma, but if they would have they said it would have been Stage 2, but they treated it the same way as if it was Stage 5. I got treated as if I had terminal cancer, which is crazy to think about."

Kathleen delivered her speech on that warm fall afternoon at Villanova Stadium.

"I told the team that I knew my fall is not going how I obviously planned it to be," said Kathleen remembering the day. "I explained to the team how these months are going to be the worst of my life, but that I'm going to be fine, eventually. This is a part of life. Hopefully I'm getting this out of my life now and not when I'm older."

She started her chemo treatments a little less than a month later on October 7^th.

Doctors installed a port under Kathleen's skin, which is a small disc that sits under the skin and helps administer the chemotherapy. Villanova head coach Julie Young along with teammate and close friend Tara DeAngelo were at the hospital when Kathleen received her first treatment.

"We walked into the room and there was Kathleen in the hospital bed, said DeAngelo. "She tried to walk out of the room with what she called her buddy (an IV Pole), but her port was plugged into the wall. There were so many new things she was going to have to deal with and I thought to myself, `this is what life will be for Kathleen for five months.' She's so outgoing, you can't confine that girl in the hospital bed for five days. But they did that and more."

While the plan was for Kathleen to be at the hospital for five straight days and have 16 days of rest, it didn't necessarily turn out that way. In between all six cycles, Kathleen had a fever, which meat she had to return to the hospital. The side effects did not stop there. She had a bacterial infection between the first and second treatments and they found a blood clot in her heart after the second cycle, making the port unusable. Kathleen spent four days in the intensive care unit alone just because of the complication.

The third cycle saw another bacterial infection, so yet again, she was back at CHOP for three days. Then after the fifth cycle treatment came mouth sores and Kathleen was unable to swallow.

While the side effects were horrid, the treatments were working. Just after the second treatment, Kathleen learned her cancer was in remission. While the opportunity arose where she could have stopped treatments all together, O'Connor chose to keep moving forward to improve the chance of the lymphoma never returning.

"At one point I was like, I got to finish this," said Kathleen. "If I don't it could come back. I went into remission very early in November. I only had around a month of treatment and I was clear. They told me if I didn't finish this regiment it could come back in a year. I wasn't going to stop, I told myself. I'm not going through this again."

With every passing treatment cycle, Kathleen became physically more and more drained.

"As the treatments progressed, it became worse and worse," Kathleen continued. "I felt like I was diminishing almost."

The women's lacrosse team constantly visited Kathleen during her four and a half months, and she always had family around to keep her occupied. The team wrote her letters, brought her fruit baskets, and even colored coloring books with her to keep her mind off the treatments. Teammate Elizabeth Armstrong has known Kathleen since they were both 14 as lacrosse teammates at Oak Knoll School in Summit, N.J. She talked about the importance of helping Kathleen through this tough time.

"Our team wrote letters for her where she could spend an afternoon, just opening them up and have something to laugh about," explained Armstrong. "The letters were not about being sorry for her, but about `guess what this happened to me in class?' It was something totally different to get her mind off of it, which was good for Kathleen."

Since her treatment concluded, Kathleen has returned to the classroom. She can often be spotted at women's lacrosse practices and games, cheering on her teammates. Head Coach Julie Young expressed how Kathleen's situation has impacted the team.

"Sports are fun, but there are a lot of real life issues out there," explained Young. "We are fortunate enough that we get to play lacrosse and that we're healthy. We are lucky. Knowing that Kathleen will get back on the field with us at some point, knowing her situation is not easy and that we're there for her. That's the biggest thing. You don't think something can happen like this but then it does. It just brings everyone together and makes you learn to be there for each other. The team has rallied around Kathleen and we have all become so much closer in the process."

Despite all she went through, Kathleen has a positive outlook of her journey from that fall day at Villanova Stadium to today where she stands cancer free.

"I have this bracelet that embodies my whole experience," she said. "It says, `Let go and Let God'. You can't control everything. God obviously has a bigger plan for all of us. I couldn't control what happened to me, or what happened to my body. But I could control my attitude and how I handle myself every day."

Along with Kathleen being out for the season, sophomore Julia Arrix is also missing the entirety of the season due to an ACL tear. Before the first game of the 2017 season on February 11 against Bucknell, Kathleen gave another speech to the team on the turf of Villanova Stadium This time, she was a little more confident.

"Julia Arrix and I, we are on our own road to recovery," belted O'Connor to her teammates. "You guys are on your own road to success. We'll meet you at the finish line."

Wherever a finish line lies for Kathleen O'Connor in life, let it be known that she will overcome anything that stands in her way.