The Best American Sports Writing 2011 (48 page)

Then she learned something else: Cal's top coxswain had been demoted to the second boat. The spot in the varsity eight was in play heading into the Pac-10 championships.

 

The good news came on May 8, the Saturday before Pac-10s. O'Neill had conducted an email poll of the top eight rowers, asking them to rank their top three coxswains. Six had put Jill first, even though she'd never coxed the top boat in competition. This was all the reassurance O'Neill needed. He was, as he says, "far too competitive" to make such an important decision based on sentimentality, but he'd seen the way Jill had worked the boats and had been impressed. Before practice he pulled her behind the boathouse. "I'm leaning toward you coxing the varsity this weekend," O'Neill said. "Are you up for it?"

It was what Jill had been waiting to hear since junior high, when she'd first dreamed of coxing an elite program. She smiled and said, "Yup."

Jill knew the job would be brutally taxing, but she was used to that by now. A couple of weeks earlier, on the eve of the Washington race, she had insisted on going to practice straight from a chemo session that had left her hardly able to stand. When her father, Jim, pulled up to the boathouse, rain was pounding down. Assistant coach Sara Nevin approached Jill as she got out of the car. "Jill, we have another cox," Nevin said. "You don't have to do this. Make a smart decision."

"I am," Jill replied.

The way Jill saw it, there was nothing more important to her recovery. If she could get in that boat, then she could keep fighting cancer. And if she could beat Stanford at the Pac-10s, then she could beat cancer.

It was all about managing her body. By this point her face was puffy, her abdomen bloated, and her feet so swollen that she couldn't wear shoes. (Instead she hobbled around in sandals.) But she had learned to conserve her energy. She'd be ready.

The heat didn't help. On Sunday, May 16, the day of the Pac-10s, it was 90 degrees at Lake Natoma, outside Sacramento, with only a whiff of a breeze. Waiting in the team tent, Jill drank water, trying to keep her temperature down. She'd awakened that morning from a feverish dream. Then she'd injected an anticoagulant into her leg and, as always, a dark bruise had immediately bloomed. Finally she'd gulped down 14 pills, the cocktail of cancer-fighting agents, vitamins, and painkillers that she needed to function. Pain was a constant now, but Jill didn't pay it much attention. "Her whole year was leading up to that moment," Mary Costello says. "She was going to finish it."

Gingerly, Jill joined her teammates in the boat. The morning's early races had gone well for Cal. Now, with only the varsity eight race remaining, Berkeley was in position to win the Pac-10 title. All the Bears needed to do was beat Stanford. On the sideline O'Neill tried not to think about the fact that this was the first time Jill had coxed the varsity eight. Usually there are preliminary heats and semifinals, but this year the Pac-10s had been compressed into one race. Jill was ready, O'Neill told himself over and over again.

In the boat Jill knew the time had come. She pulled out a vial and passed it to sophomore Kristina Lofman, who was immediately in front of her, and told her to pass it around. Lofman stared at it and asked, "Do I drink it?"

A few seats behind her Elise Etem, the powerful sophomore whose brother had been drafted by the Anaheim Ducks, thought perhaps her cox had lost her mind and brought the tiniest bottle of refreshment in the history of sports. "Um, I think we're good on water, Jill," Etem said.

"No," replied Jill, calm as can be. "It's miracle water."

And with that, each rower took a splash of the water, which Jill had brought back from Lourdes in plastic bottles, and, as if applying perfume, dabbed it behind an ear.

On the PA system, the race announcer said, "Attention!"

Their backs to the finish line, the eight rowers faced the small, puffy-faced girl with a blue Cal hat and a hands-free microphone. A thousand thoughts raced through their heads. In the fourth seat Etem thought that if Jill could be sitting there that day, then Etem could certainly row all-out for 2,000 meters. In the fifth seat Mary Jeghers thought how special it was that after being Jill's teammate for four years, this was the first time she had Jill as her cox. And in the eighth seat, only a foot or so from Jill, Lofman thought about what was to come.

Before the race O'Neill had pulled Lofman aside. "At a thousand meters I want you to look in Jill's face," O'Neill had said, "and be as brave as she is." Lofman had nodded her head, but she was scared. She didn't know if she could do it—be as brave as Jill. Later she would say that she had never gone for it as much as she did in that race, that she felt nothing was going to stop her.

The flag dropped, and the Cal team shot out like a waterborne rocket. Oregon State, Washington, and Washington State dropped back immediately. Only one team—Stanford, of course—would stick with the Bears. At 500 meters it was Cal by a nose. At 1,000 it was Cal by half a boat length. It was there that Lofman noticed something unusual: a dab of scarlet just below Jill's nose. Then the smudge grew, blood snaking toward Jill's upper lip. Jill saw the fear in Lofman's eyes and knew what had happened. With a quick, disdainful motion she wiped away the blood with the back of her hand. Lofman felt a surge of energy course through her. "It was like she wasn't going to let her body stop her from doing what she wanted to do," says Lofman. Already close to maxing out, Lofman dug even deeper.

With 300 meters to go Cal remained well out in front. But then, half a minute later, with only 100 meters to go, it happened: on her return stroke Etem caught half a crab, and moments later so did Kara Kohler, another port oar, causing the boat to rock violently. With a quick motion Jill grabbed the rope and yanked, pulling the shell back to starboard. "Finish strong" was all she said.

With that the boat righted and regained speed. Good thing too, for Stanford was now just 10 feet behind. The crews hit the finish line in a blur. There was a beat, and then a roar went up from the shoreline: the Bears had won by less than a second. By the slimmest of margins—half a point—the Pac-10 championship was Cal's.

If anyone questioned whether the girls had given their all, he had only to look at the boat. In their greatest moment of triumph, two of the rowers sagged over their oars, while another two were bent over the side of the boat heaving. Eventually the shell coasted into the shore, and the team piled out. Lofman, ankle deep in the water, wrapped her arms around Jill, later swearing that she could feel the joy in her coxswain bubbling into the embrace.

If there was any doubt about Jill's ability as a coxswain, it was gone. She would be Cal's varsity eight cox at nationals two weeks later.

 

If you were told you had a month left to live, what would you do? By May the prognosis for Jill had grown alarmingly dark. She paid it no mind. She'd learned early in her treatment to look at the world through a different lens. Her advice, as she wrote:
Your life is happening right now and this is the only moment you can control. This is the only minute that really matters. If you are constantly dwelling on something that happened in the past or feeling anxious about the future, you are missing out on YOUR LIFE. Do what makes you happy in this moment and your life will be full.

What's more, Jill was part of something larger than herself now. For six months she'd been working with the San Francisco-based Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation, and she had agreed to become its director of public awareness after graduation. She funneled her energy into organizing a charity run in Golden Gate Park called Jog for Jill, which when it was held on a foggy Sunday in September would attract close to 5,000 people and raise more than $320,000. She spoke at Genentech, a cancer research firm, exchanged emails with half a dozen other cancer patients nationwide, and was interviewed on NPR as a voice of nonsmoker lung-cancer sufferers. She continued her schoolwork at Cal, as fastidious as ever. When, after a therapy-related extension, she handed in her final paper in International Trade, her professor gave her an A-minus without even looking at Jill's work. Naturally Jill was upset, believing she'd turned in a really good paper, one she'd worked diligently to finish. So she contacted the professor, who took a look and awarded her a straight A. The result: Jill had a 4.0 average in her final semester at Cal.

Why stop living? She persuaded her parents to get her a dog as her graduation present. Atkinson figured he'd go along with it, that she needed this. Later he realized that she was getting the dog as much for him and her parents as for herself, so there would be something of her left if she didn't make it. Jill chose a Maltese puppy, which she of course named Jack. She received the Pac-10 women's rowing Athlete of the Year Award and the Joseph M. Kavanagh Award, presented to the most inspirational athlete at Cal.

On May 18 Jill graduated, walking across the stage at Zellerbach Auditorium to thunderous applause while wearing her Pac-10 medal and a blond wig. Five days later her parents held a graduation party at their house for 150 people. Because Mary had traveled with her daughter to Lourdes, it had fallen to Jim, a laconic water department supervisor, to organize the fiesta. "In 31 years of marriage that was the first time he'd had to host an event," says Mary.

Jill barely made it through the party, retiring to her room to rest four times. The next morning she was back at practice, and again on Tuesday, when her parents joined her for the final session at Briones. The next morning the team left for nationals in Sacramento while Jill stayed behind for a doctor's appointment.

That afternoon she got the worst news yet. The treatment hadn't stopped the growth of the tumors in her lungs, bones, and liver. It was time to move, the doctors told her, from How do we cure this? to How do we make your last few weeks as comfortable as possible? In Natoma, O'Neill received the news in a text from Jill. After months of holding it in, of playing the role of the stoic coach, the ultimate optimist, he finally cracked. Gathering the whole squad in the boathouse, he began a speech about teamwork, then brought up Jill. "Guys," he said, "we can't control how many days she has left, but we can control the quality of the days she has left." Then O'Neill, who prided himself on never showing emotion, had to stop. He turned away so the girls wouldn't see him crying.

That night no one expected Jill at the late practice, especially because it was an unimportant one, devoted to rigging the boats. But there she was. She had gone straight from the doctor's office to meet with an assistant coach and with Obradovic, the star rower, who'd had to stick around for a class, then traveled up to Sacramento. She was as upbeat as ever. Jeghers remembers marveling that you'd never have known about Jill's diagnosis, that Jill didn't once mention being tired. Even though she was having trouble walking and keeping food down, Jill tried to show up to Saturday afternoon practice. Only after O'Neill insisted did she relent and stay at the hotel.

Just by making it this far, she'd defied the odds. Of all others given a diagnosis of lung cancer in June 2009, more than half had died by January. And here Jill was, six months later, about to race at nationals.

There was so much wrapped up in this final race. Lying in bed that week, O'Neill had confided to his wife, Nicole, that while the rowers never talked about it, they felt that if they could win the NCAAs, then Jill could beat cancer. "It would be like Lance Armstrong all over again," he said. Saturday night, on the eve of the final race, O'Neill got up at the team dinner and said he thought it wasn't fair that everyone got to race as Team Jill except Jill herself. Then he'd pulled out a turquoise uniform for Jill.

The next morning, rowers were on hand from schools across the country—Princeton, Virginia, Yale—and many of them knew nothing about Jill. The trainer for Washington State, Barb Russell, knew only because she was friends with Smitty. So when the Cougars were knocked out in the semis, Russell couldn't contain herself any longer. She gathered the team around her. "Do you know why Cal is wearing those colors?" she asked. "Okay, let me tell you a story." Five minutes later all the Washington State rowers were clustered at the shoreline, cheering for Cal. They didn't stop until well after the boat had crossed the finish line.

The Bears' four finished second that day, and the second eight finished third. The field for the varsity eights, meanwhile, was extremely fast. In the first two heats, four boats had broken the course record. It would be no small feat, but if Jill's boat beat Virginia, Cal would be national champion.

 

In the final the Yale crew took an early lead, with Virginia and Princeton close and Cal in fourth. At 1,000 meters the Bears were a half-boat length back and looked out of the race. Knowing they needed to make a move, Jill exhorted the team to take a "power 10." Beat by beat it worked, and Cal gained on the Cavaliers. The Bears had found their swing.

Here it was, the dramatic comeback everyone was waiting for: after the fastest third leg of any boat by far, Cal was only 10 feet behind Virginia. On the shore O'Neill watched on the JumboTron and then, overtaken by the moment, began sprinting alongside the boat, yelling, "Go, Cal! Go, Jill!" In the stands Atkinson and Mary and Jim Costello were on their feet, Atkinson pumping his arms as if he might row the boat himself. The Washington State girls roared. The whole cosmos roared for Jill Costello, or so it seemed in that moment.

And then suddenly it was over. Cal ran out of water, finishing fourth, while Virginia came in second. Reality set in: the Bears had finished second at nationals. Lofman doubled over, bawling. Kohler, the six-foot freshman who looked like a Viking goddess, couldn't tell what was sweat and what was tears. None of them understood. No one had wanted it more than they had. Most schools would be ecstatic to finish second in the country; hell, the same girls had been ecstatic to finish second only a year earlier. But this was different.

The least upset girl was the one who had the most reason to be. Jill didn't break down and cry. She didn't scream out. She didn't wallow in the defeat. Instead she went to her mom and picked up Jack, then brought him back to the bleachers for the medal ceremony. That's where someone took the photo that Nevin set as her Facebook profile picture, the one that O'Neill included in the team training schedule, the one that Obradovic uses as her laptop background. It's the same shot that was in the program at Jill's funeral when she passed away less than a month later, on June 24, 2010. In the photo Jill is holding Jack aloft with one hand in front of the second-place trophy, smiling like the luckiest girl in the world.