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Women’s Soccer To Honor The Late Jill Darr Rowell Friday
Gamecocks to give a special presentation at halftime of Friday’s SEC title game against Florida

COLUMBIA, S.C. – The University of South Carolina women’s soccer team will honor the late Jill Darr Rowell at Friday’s SEC regular season championship match against Florida with a special halftime presentation. The game is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Stone Stadium.

Darr Rowell was a women’s golf student-athlete at South Carolina from 1992-95 who lost a 10-month battle with AML Leukemia on April 18, 2010 at the age of 37. Survived by a seven-year old daughter, Carlie, and a two-year old son, Evan, Darr Rowell was an avid Gamecock men’s and women’s soccer fan along with her husband, Richard, who was an assistant coach with the men’s team from 1994-2000. Richard Rowell (former Dreher HS boys soccer coach) also served as a broadcaster for the men’s and women’s programs from 2001-05 after marrying Jill on the University of South Carolina campus at Rutledge Chapel on the Horseshoe in 2001. Darr Rowell ended her battle with cancer in her hometown of Gainesville, Fla., at the University of Florida Shands Cancer Center.

Darr Rowell earned an English degree from South Carolina in 1995 before earning a Masters of Arts in Teaching in Elementary Education in 1999. She taught at Satchel Ford Elementary School in Columbia, S.C., and also served as the women’s varsity golf coach at Dreher High School.

Information about Leukemia Lymphoma will be available at the game for all persons wishing to learn more about the disease that affects more than 130,000 new patients each year.

South Carolina plays Florida Friday night at 7 p.m. in a game that will decide the 2010 SEC Regular Season Champion. The match will be televised live on SUN Sports and will also serve as Senior Day for five South Carolina seniors playing their final home games at Stone Stadium.

* It is SR night for Brittiny Rhoades, Brooke Jacobs, Mollie
Patton, Maddie Kill and Maggie Blackwell and I am sure they would appreciate the support.

* It is HIGH SCHOOL night - there was an invitation that went out a while back to all HS coaches to bring their teams - all interested can contact Josh Waters at waters5@mailbox.sc.edu or 777 5567 for the $1 tickets.

It is both an honor and humbling that Jamie and Shelley wanted to do this and I look forward to being there with my children and family on Friday. Jill would be embarrassed by the attention being placed on her, so one big reason for this "event" is to create awareness of the disease that struck Jill.

Did you know?
Every 4 minutes one person is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

An estimated 137,260 people in the United States will be diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2010. New cases of leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma will account for 9.0 percent of the 1,529,560 new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States this year*.

Leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma will cause the deaths of an estimated 54,020 people in the United States this year. These blood cancers will account for nearly 9.5 percent of the deaths from cancer in 2010 based on the 569,490 total cancer-related deaths.

Every ten minutes, someone dies from a blood cancer. This statistic represents nearly 148 people each day, or more than six people every hour. Leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20.

*Facts and statistics from Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma Facts 2010-2011

What can you do to help?

Get on the National Bone Marrow Registry (www.bethematch.org)
Getting on the registry requires nothing more than a cheek swab. If you become a match, most transplants now are stem cell related so donating is little more than an apheresis type donation (no needle in the bum).
Matches run along ethnic lines. Currently minorities are in short supply on the registry. A caucasion of European decent is 75% likely to find a match while a person of African decent is only 22% likely to find a match. (We actually had found a match on the registry but never made it to transplant).

Give blood products
During Jill's 10 month treatment we used approximately 80 units of blood product in the form of packed red cells and platelets. Please consider giving blood or platelets.

Support organizations such as the Leukemia Lymphoma Soceity, bethematch.org, or any local group that funds research and development of cures. Here in Gainesville we have STOP!Children's Cancer and of course we have started our own foundation the Jill Darr Rowell Foundation (www.gnvcf.org is the parent organization giving us our 501c3 status).

Thanks again to the South Carolina Women's Soccer Team, the USC Athletics Department and the Smiths. Best of luck Friday.

I was present at this game and witnessed something I've never seen. The goal scored by Florida - with about 10 seconds to go in the first half, the referee whistled SC for a foul just outside their 18. Florida placed the ball and did a quick restart in an attempt to score before time ran out. SC intercepted the quick restart and kicked it away.

The referee stopped the clock and set the defenders 10 yards from the direct kick. Direct kick taken - upper 90 - ball game.

I'm perplexed as to why the referee stopped the clock. Even if the defenders had asked for 10 yards, the clock keeps running, eh??? Any referees out there offer a plausible explanation, other than perhaps he thought SC kicked the ball away in an effort to waste time? It would be so nice for a referee to admit his mortality and admit he made a mistake. We're human and can understand that!

Shelley and Jamie questioned him vehemently at the half and at the end of the game. I learned long ago it's practically useless to question referees; all coaches really want is consistency in a referee. It was easy to see the frustration Shelley and Jamie felt; Florida would have felt it, too, had the score been reversed. It wasn't just this call - there were plenty that Florida got the short end of, too!

Anybody else see this call differently??? Maybe I'm showing my humanity and made an error...