BERKELEY, Calif. — A bouquet of brilliant yellow sunflowers just lately arrived at Savannah Rennie‘s workplace from a buddy at USC who supported her by way of a life transition final 12 months.

“Simply because,” the assistant volleyball coach on the College of California defined with a smile.

Simply as Lauren Crawford, an athletic coach at USC, had hoped.

“The entire level of me sending these was to place a smile on her face – who doesn’t like an excellent sunflower?” Crawford stated.

Rennie is having so many far brighter days in Berkeley now. She went by way of probably the most attempting time in her life upon arriving at Cal greater than eight years in the past as a freshman making ready to play volleyball, a collection of well being scares derailing every thing she had deliberate to do on the court docket and off it.

Rennie‘s life has come full circle to convey her again to the Bay Space.

She returned to Cal earlier this 12 months and works inside Haas Pavilion, the place she used to return each morning at 5 a.m. and once more after dinner to present herself 45-minute IV remedies that medical doctors hoped would assist her keep away from a liver transplant.

Now she’s serving to to information the Golden Bears and is keen to assist any younger girls going by way of their very own challenges. Whereas Cal’s season is completed, loads of eyes shall be on faculty volleyball this weekend as rival Stanford hosts the NCAA Event regional.

At age 18, and after months of hospital stays and exams, Rennie was recognized with a life-threatening liver situation known as congenital hepatic fibrosis with portal hypertension. That summer time, earlier than beginning college, she had skilled insufferable complications and excessive fevers, nausea and a lack of urge for food, soreness after which ache in her stomach. She had physique aches and misplaced weight.

Figuring out she won’t stay lengthy sufficient to obtain a brand new liver in California given the demand and lengthy wait, she in the end took a go away of absence from college and the Cal program as a participant. Rennie relocated to Indiana and waited almost 2 ½ months for a transplant at Indiana College that saved her life.

She lastly received again on the court docket in 2016 solely to then cope with the analysis that she had Non-Hodgkin’s post-transplant lymphoma and would wish chemotherapy. Rennie was sidelined once more for 2017 then performed two extra seasons for Cal earlier than ending her profession at Marquette, utilizing the additional COVID 12 months and enjoying as a graduate scholar.

Rennie realizes now, all these years later, that going by way of absolute hell as she fought for her life needed to occur for her to seek out her approach again to Berkeley now as a coach.

“I really feel like there’s moments, it’s like a curler coaster of like there’s weeks it seems like this was so way back particularly experiencing issues as a coach,” she stated. “It’s like ‘Wow, yeah I did that however that seems like without end in the past, however then there’s moments of, ‘Yeah, I skilled that and that seems like yesterday.’”

Even Rennie understands how inconceivable her path has been to get her again to the place it began.

“Figuring out Savannah from 14 or 15 after which teaching her for a pair years, it was apparent that she had a coach’s mentality due to the best way she performed the sport and approached the sport, the questions that she would ask the teaching workers and simply the best way she utilized herself from follow to the video games,” former Cal coach Wealthy Feller stated.

“I feel I most likely stated to her, ‘You’re going to be a coach sometime’ and I don’t know if she responded, ‘sure, no kidding’ or ‘nah, I by no means will’ however I’m glad to see she’s out right here doing it and dwelling her dream and persevering with her profession.”

So many cheered Rennie throughout her ordeal – like adorned volleyball stars Karch Kiraly and Kerri Walsh Jennings – and she or he has loads of new followers at the moment.

“What I might need individuals to know is that she is a lot greater than her story. Her journey to this point is only a chapter in what’s to return,” USC‘s Crawford stated. “Savannah is a really passionate, pushed and caring individual. … She would stroll to the ends of the earth for these people who she cares about and has a view on life that’s fully completely different from every other 26-year-old that I do know.”

Having already handled seemingly a lifetime’s price of well being battles, Rennie figures she’s going to most actually have nice fortune effectively into her 80s and 90s.