Aragon Joyce Chanel top

  Imagine, like any other day in your life, you wake and get ready to go to school. You have 14 years.

Dresses are eaten breakfast packed backpack. The clock is ticking. You are late. Your mother takes forever.

What's taking so long?

Suddenly, your stepfather tells you they do not wake up. A little freaked out, you storm into her bedroom and found her unconscious. Call 911 and emergency personnel arrive. After reviving your mother to wheel it away, but not before she tells you "do not miss school because of it."

You do not know, but in two short months after being diagnosed with lymphoma, sleepless nights and a series of operations, your mother is dead.

Your best friend is gone.

What do you do?

Chanel Joyce Aragon is a warrior - a Don named, yes, but a warrior at heart. Wednesday, surrounded by 60 of his closest supporters, the older signed on the dotted line, accepting a scholarship, volleyball for the Golden Eagles of the University of Southern Mississippi play.

Stories of athletes to sign on the dotted line to play at a higher level are not clear. But Joyce is certainly. And everyone knows the old gym Aragon, who came to celebrate his personal milestone.

There was cake, lots of black and gold, laughter, pictures, and a very important speech, when Joyce those who knew of its closer than blood, sweat and tears of the past three years, told God lives dedicated and especially his mother.

Yes, they found the unconscious that morning in November. One who died of cancer on 20 December 2009. The same they never really had a chance to say goodbye.

The joy in the gym was far died only three years ago by the sadness in the hospital room where they lie next to his mother in a coma, brandy, lying with her daughter next to her was - if even thought to pick up a volleyball was stupid .

"It was so surreal," Joyce said, recalling the death of his mother. "It's as if I did not think it could happen. When my best friend, my mother just died."

Joyce said that his mother had for a few years before doctors discovered ill several tumors in his brain - this time his mother was sicker than the normal days. And Joyce said his disbelief in hope and positive outlook doctors her mother was rooted, got them and their family.

Well mother, Joyce became a hermit, bitter world. His first year at Aragon was struggling with young people to make sense of the horrific tragedy of life.

The only thing that was kept out of his desire to fulfill one of his mother's last wishes was to play Brandy Chanel, volleyball. So in autumn 2011, Joyce has black and red for the Dons, and once again, changed his whole life on.

"I started playing volleyball for my anger," Joyce said. "That's what they wanted to play (the mother) to me. I did not want to play volleyball. My mother wanted me to play."

Joyce once stepped on the volleyball court, there was no denying his incredible athletic. In the 5-9 sophomore has the ability to jump to much higher blocks had met. And its ability to defend was strange for a girl of her size.

"It is certainly the most athletic in this area for some time," Young said Kelsey Stiles, Aragon assistant head coach and club Joyce.

Ah yes, style coach. It is here that we come to a triumphant very important part of the story of Joyce. So she decided to join the volleyball team, it was always somewhat distant Joyce unfolds on the season. And it is only the chance for a conversation in the first part of the season donations Joyce took a step toward healing has.

Stiles recalls: "One day, she just kind of looks at me ... We were on the bench and she is sitting next to me and said." Do you hear something really sad? And this is the first time that they had actually spoken to me instead of me coaching her, and I said. "Of course, we are in the middle of a game, but whatever"

Joyce Stiles went on to say a trip pending Chico, to mourn the death of his grandfather.

"She said," Can you imagine losing your daughter and your husband in the same year? "

Joyce spoke of his grandmother, who both lost in the same year.

The chance of the conversation was to instruct its choice Stiles is the first step on the road to Joyce. She said she did not know exactly what led them to do, but sometimes there are higher powers involved that can not be explained.

Both near and grew was sister like. Joyce Stiles took under his wing and brought them to the Team Xtreme 650 Club, where they play ground Joyce Gross athletic ability.

But few know how to style an influence on Joyce's life.

Less than a year after this conversation on the bench Aragon, Stiles father was diagnosed with cancer. Three months later he died. And a pillar of hope Stiles was the girl from San Mateo, knew exactly what style, 24 years went by.

"I felt as if she was a role model," Joyce said, "someone I could turn. When my mother died, she was there for me. So I have a feeling that when his father died, I for they had to be there I have to be ready to get up and I said Kelsey.. "Looking for you"

So help Stiles and his family navigate through the difficulties of loss, Joyce turned the corner of his own healing. His extended family has grown by Stiles and his church. Joyce was a belief in God restored. And hours in the gym, Joyce was one of the most complete players in the Peninsula Athletic League - anchoring the attention of a handful of volleyball programs.

"When my mother died, it made me more mature," Joyce said. "He showed me that life is a very different picture. Watching my mother, she was a single mother, so she had to mature quickly. So that showed me that times are tough, they help you grow as a person. I had to do to help me. My mother wants me to. "

And his mother stressed the importance of education - to play by signing Southern Miss Joyce performs another of his mother's will.

"I think this kid is so strong, it drives me literally every day," Stiles said, further, the importance of the guard Joyce, Barbara Barley. "The things they had to overcome in the situation, I mean a handful, I'll tell you, but by what they experienced to go -. 14 years, they fought, and see where it is now, and if they can handle it, it can overcome that, "Why can not I do this, this and this? "

"Everything is possible," Joyce said. "I know that now. My mother died when I was 14, and I refuse to go but everywhere, to the top."

And a steady increase in the NCAA Division I is not hard to imagine that someone with a fighting spirit like Joyce.