Leslie Oliver sat in the Wittenberg locker room Sept. 1, waiting to hear coach Kwame Lloyd read the starting lineup. She didn’t expect her name to be in it because she hadn’t played a real soccer game in almost two years.

That’s a lifetime for a college senior. Then you factor in all she had experienced in the meantime — the concussion during a game in 2010, the CAT scan that followed, the accidental discovery of a tumor during that scan, the six-month wait for a follow-up MRI, the discovery that the tumor had grown, the surgery to remove the tumor, the chemotherapy and radiation treatments that followed, the second brain surgery and the chemotherapy pills she was still taking until recently.

All that had to be on Oliver’s mind when she heard Lloyd call her name. She would start in the midfield.

“I can’t even describe the feeling,” she said. “I was twitching. It was pretty amazing.”

That describes this entire story. If not for a head-to-head collision in a game against Ohio Wesleyan at Edwards-Maurer Field on Oct. 2, 2010, Oliver might not even be here.

The concussion that resulted from the collision wasn’t the problem. It was what the doctors found in Oliver’s brain that changed her life.

“They found something there,” she said. “It was just a tiny thing. I had no symptoms whatsoever. The surgeon said, ‘Let’s see what this looks like in sixth months. If it doesn’t move, we’re probably fine.’ But I went back six months later thinking everything was fine, and they said it’s getting bigger.’”

Oliver had surgery to remove the nickel-sized tumor, and a biopsy confirmed it was a a Grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma glioma, a cancerous tumor. Has the concussion not occurred, the tumor would have quietly grown. Mitch Oliver, Leslie’s dad, said it would have eventually put pressure on Leslie’s brain, and she would have started to show symptoms, perhaps in a loss of motor skills.

The early discovery was serendipitous.

“We really honestly believe God’s hand has been in this from the beginning because of the way we found it,” Oliver said. “We really believe we were meant to find it. It was found not by happenstance, but by divine intervention.

Following surgery to remove the tumor on May 12, 2011, Oliver underwent 6½ weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. The promise of a trip to Europe with the soccer team at the end of the treatments boosted her spirits.

Oliver lost hair on one side of her head. She also had to quickly rule out playing that fall because the treatments sapped her of energy. Through everything, she impressed everyone with her strength.

“She has dealt with it great,” Mitch Oliver said. “She had a couple of breakdowns where she said, ‘I can’t believe this. Why is this happening?’ But those have been very few. The vast majority of time she’s handled it amazingly well.”

Leslie thanked her parents and boyfriend, Roland Sommer, for helping her get through the tough times.

“I’ve never seen my dad break down, and my mom’s incredible too,” Oliver said. “My boyfriend Roland has been extremely supportive. When we first found it, we were only dating three months, and I was in the hospital less than 24 hours, and he came to see me twice. We’ve been together a year and a half, and that’s strengthened our relationship.”

Oliver practiced last spring, but didn’t play in any scrimmages. She had a second brain surgery in May because an MRI showed another spot on her brain, but they tested it and no new tumor was found.

Oliver began to prepare for this season.

“Her teammates voted her a captain last spring,” Lloyd said. “She elected not to be captain this fall because she wanted to continue to work on her game. You’ve got to respect that. I know the players were a little disappointed because she is one of the true leaders in our program. She’s a coach on the field. She has a great soccer IQ and understands the game very well. The only thing that holds her back right now is her energy level.”

Oliver faces a future with MRIs every three months, at least for the next five years, as doctors monitor her brain to see if the cancer has returned. It’s something she’ll have to deal with the rest of her life, her dad said, but it’s not something she’ll let run her life.

“It sounds so cliche,” Leslie said, “but you really just learn to live like you’re dying. It’s like a classic country song. You just learn to appreciate every day.”