It has been said that the story is told in the dash between the dates. For Jazzy Richards, a senior on the Sooner soccer team, that dash needs to be longer than most.
A native of The Woodlands, Texas, Jazzy arrived in Norman in the summer of 2018. Before preseason, she was playing and collided with another player. The impact wasn’t that hard, so she thought nothing of it.
A few days later, she noticed blood in her urine and was sent for tests. The tests were not conclusive, and she was sent home for a month of rest and no physical activity. Symptoms didn’t improve and a specialist determined there was a tumor in her bladder. The tumor proved to be malignant, and Jazzy became the first person in the world to be diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in her bladder.
With no treatment protocol for the aggressive cancer, doctors gave Jazzy and her family two treatment options: monitor the tumor and if it grew, remove the bladder, or immediately remove the bladder. Late in the first semester of her freshman year, the Richards family made the difficult decision to remove the bladder.
“I knew my class schedule for the second semester,” Jazzy said. “I visited with each professor before I headed home. I explained what was going on and all helped me figure out a plan for the classes I would miss.”
Surgery happened in mid-January and Richards returned to campus in February. Cleared to resume training in March, she returned to soccer in May. She played in all 19 games as a sophomore. She looked forward to a quality return to the pitch in the fall of 2020.
A coaching change happened, and Richards lost the coach who had been there from the start. Jazzy has high praise for the new staff and the support offered.
The pandemic hit in March 2020 and Richards faced a shutdown on campus—academically and athletically. The off-site, online classes brought new challenges while Jazzy continued to add to her 4.00 cumulative GPA. She was named the Class of 2020 Honda Inspiration Award winner by The Collegiate Women Sports Award. However, the pandemic forced the cancellation of the awards ceremony and the dash continued to grow.
Richards was held out in the fall of 2020. Chosen as a team captain, she returned to competition in the spring of 2021. She played all six games, starting 3. That set her up for a senior season that was arguably her best. She played 19 of 20 games, led the team in goals scored and was second in points.
She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in accounting in May 2021 and will earn her master’s degree, also in accounting, this May. She has a 4.00 GPA heading into her final semester and has a job waiting for her at Price Waterhouse Cooper in the tax depreciation services group. She goes through scans every six months and is looking forward to the day that the scans are scheduled on an annual basis.
"I'm thankful for my time at OU because it's allowed me to meet some of my favorite people and create memories that will last a lifetime,” Jazzy added. “I’ve learned so much at OU. Time management, discipline, focus, balance—I have learned to deal with what I can. Looking back, there is nothing I would change.”
And with her usual even-keel approach, Jazzy adds something else to that dash.
“I may be a name in a textbook someday—the first person in the world to have a brain tumor develop in her bladder.”