When the Varsity Lady Pioneers clenched their district championship win against the Weatherford Roos on Oct. 15, Assistant Coach Christina Rudiger was wearing a bright pink dress with a pink floral scarf as a hairband. Coach Rafeal Lopez wore a pink button down and a hot pink tie, and Assistant Coach William Mitchell wore a hot pink suit.

As the game ended, the pink-clad coaches joined in a celebratory huddle with the Lady Pioneers, who had traded their usual blue and white uniforms for pink and white ones.
The wardrobe changes were to mark the team’s “Pink Out Week,” an annual event aimed at bringing awareness toward breast cancer.
“Boswell volleyball usually decorates the gym and wears pink during October,” senior and volleyball captain Zoey Dupriest said. “The gym is usually set up with pink on the lines of the court as well as pink on the antennas. We make posters and streamers throughout the gym. We also throw pink volleyballs into the crowd!”
The pink-out season hits especially close to home for Rudiger, who at one time had been diagnosed with and battled breast cancer. Now, she is a survivor.

“I learned a lot of things about myself that I didn’t know,” Rudiger said about her experience with the disease.
She also had to relearn some basics like “how to wear makeup, how to wear scarves when you have no hair,” she said. “I learned way more when I was diagnosed about some of those issues than I have ever thought about.”
Rudiger is open about that experience with her players, hoping to provide a positive example to them, just as she had from her high school coaches. She said her own coaches helped her and guided her throughout her journey after enduring it for themselves.
“My high school volleyball coach and basketball coach both had breast cancer,” Rudiger said. “When my basketball coach, Glenda Kramer, had her mastectomy, her spouse had the flu. A whole bunch of us friends spent time with her, and the day that she got to take her bandages off and got to take a shower was when I was with her at the hospital. It helped me know what I was going to look like after mine because I saw her and helped her. It prepared me a bit more so I wasn’t shocked when I saw myself after surgery.”
Rudiger said those same coaches served as mentors during her own struggle.
“My basketball coach said to me once I was diagnosed, ‘It’s a marathon, not a sprint. One day at a time and you’ll get through it,’” she said. “She also told me not to go to ‘Dr. Google.’ It’ll drive me crazy.”
Through battling breast cancer, Rudiger said she found the importance of staying engaged in her own personal health.
“When I was the health teacher, I would strongly encourage all of my students to be their own health advocate,” she said. “A lot of people don’t want to go to the doctor because they are afraid they’re going to find something wrong. I think the biggest thing you could do for yourself is to go to those checkups and not put them off.”
“In my case I had a great primary care physician,” she said. “When my mammogram came back, the report said they did not see anything, but it was my primary (doctor) who said, ‘We are going to do a sonogram so we do not miss anything.’”
That decision turned out to be pivotal.
“It was him ordering that sonogram that found the cancer,” she said. “It was already in my lymph nodes. If he had missed that, it wouldn’t have been good.”
Rudiger said that people should make a point to ask questions of their doctors.
“You’re the only one that knows your body. Don’t be afraid to ask those questions,” she said.
She named several close friends and classmates who have survived breast cancer that she wished to recognize: Glenda Kramer, Joni McCoy, Tina DiVincenzo, Debbie Hanlon, Toni Covington, Dora Furrow, Amanda Pilbeam, Nicole Schuller and Lisa Wessels. She also mentioned several who lost their battle to breast cancer: Jessica Green, Jenny Rabbitt and Tricia Bowen.
“And my immediate family was amazing through my ordeal,” she said. “Also, my good friend Mary King was a solid support as well.”
Rudiger said that facing breast cancer, and yet healing from it, is “something that will change you and stick with you forever,” and that breast cancer awareness is a cause she’d continue to champion with events like Pink Out Week.
“It raises awareness to the disease, and the opportunities it provides to raise money for research, or money for mammograms for women who can’t afford them,” she said.
Rudiger said that throughout her battle, she learned to develop different mindsets to help embrace her journey.
“Take one day at a time,” she said, adding that she learned “to have grace with myself.”
“If I was not having a good day, that was okay,” Rudiger said, “If you don’t feel good or tired just listen to your body. It is okay to slow down.”
Above all, Rudiger said she learned how precious life can be.
“It taught me to live in the moment, a bit more than I thought I did,” she said.