Feb. 23, 2010

DeKALB, Ill. - Losing your best friend is never easy to deal with, nor is it an easy subject to talk about, but for Northern Illinois volleyball sophomore setter Kristin Hoffman (Batavia, Ill./Batavia) --- it’s motivation. Motivation to take down the disease that claimed her best friend in the world, Erin Potts. Motivation for her to do everything in her power to make sure others do not have to experience a devastating loss like she and the Potts family did because of this wretched disease called cancer.

“Kristin’s path to NIU has been a unique one,” said NIU head coach Ray Gooden. “She was truly grateful for her opportunities before her relationship with Erin. Now, she is even more grateful that she even had the opportunity to have that relationship because it was special. As she’s continued her collegiate experience, she is trying to give back as much as she’s received. It’s great to see and we are very proud of her.”

Their friendship started about three years ago. When Hoffman met Potts, her eventual best friend was lying in a hospital bed suffering from and fighting against Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer that occurs primarily in the bone or soft tissue.

“I was put on Erin’s old club team, First Alliance, to basically replace her as the setter,” Hoffman said. “I knew of her before because her older sister Sarah is a year older than my sister and both played club. So, I knew of her family through club volleyball. When our club team went to visit her that was the first time that we met face-to-face.

“At the time, I was really nervous to meet her because I was thinking about how I would feel if I had cancer and someone was taking my spot on the team that I played with for many years. For a while, I tried to do the little things when we visited her. I would put motivational quotes on big pieces of paper on the walls of her hospital room and things like that, but never in a million years did I think we’d become best friends over the next three years.”

As Potts’ fight continued and the days passed, her relationship with Hoffman strengthened and the two developed into best friends.

“She would come to a lot of our club practices and games that she could make,” Hoffman said. “With us both being setters, we just had a bond and it happened over time. It’s hard to describe.

“My senior year of high school she was feeling better and came to pretty much all of our practices, where we would sit on the bench together during down time. Last year, I kept up with my club team and I’d see her during winter or spring break. We’d hang out all the time together. It was a progressive thing that evolved over time, especially this past summer. We spent a lot of time together over the summer hanging out and just doing normal things like watching movies.”

Hoffman also got to share the experiences of her best friend going to prom, graduating high school and even attending a few months of college.

“Those were really exciting times for Erin and her family,” said Hoffman. “We celebrated those events. She looked beautiful at prom. I was at her graduation party. Those were great times. She attended Elmhurst College for a few months. She was in the emergency room the night before her first classes started at Elmhurst and told her mom she was going to make it to class. She was really excited that she could do all those things.”

On December 18, 2009, Hoffman’s life changed forever. That day, she received the news that her 18-year-old best friend had succumbed to her battle with cancer.

“My first thought was that I could not believe it happened,” said Hoffman. “I had seen her less than 24 hours before that. She was normal, trying to make everyone else think that she was okay. Everything happened so fast. It was a wretched feeling in my heart that I do not have words to describe, really. The thing that gets me through when I think about it is that the last thing I told her was that I loved her. That was the first time I had said that to her in-person.”

In response to Hoffman’s life-changing experience last December, she has taken the initiative to register the NIU volleyball team as one of 55 teams raising donations for the Relay For Life of NIU event at the Convocation Center on April 16-17. Hoffman has set her team’s funds goal at $2,000, and hopes to crush that number. Thus far, her group has collected over $1,300 in donations that will go to the American Cancer Society with 52 days left until the event. To help Hoffman and the Huskies smash their goal and aid in the fight against cancer, visit their Relay For Life team page.

“Relay For Life has always been a special thing for our club team,” Hoffman said. “We started a team called E-Unit in the summer of 2007 in Erin’s honor. She didn’t like to tell people that she had cancer because she wanted to live a normal life, but we wanted to do something to honor her. When I found out about this year’s Relay For Life event at NIU I wanted to do it. Relay For Life helps everyone and is a great opportunity to help fight cancer because cancer will impact all of us at some point in our lives. I also asked my NIU teammates to be involved because they are my support system, and they have been great through this tough process.

“I’m really close with Erin’s mom and she always says that she hopes that Erin has impacted us in other ways, too. Being a captain of a Relay For Life team shows part of the huge impact she has had on me, and I want to share her story with as many people as I can because of its impact on life.”

To find out more about Hoffman’s story, visit her Relay For Life homepage.

 

-NIU-

Northern Illinois University Women's Volleyball

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