OZARK, Mo. (KY3) – The Ozark community has mourned a promising young athlete.
Josie Orellana lost her battle with cancer Thursday night. Oriana, No. 35 on the Ozark volleyball team, was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago. She died after complications during a bone marrow transplant, and although her battle was long and hard, those who knew her say it never stopped.
“You can look in her eyes and see the fire burning,” said her personal trainer Zane Davidson. “There wasn’t any twitching in her throat about what she was going to do. She was like, ‘I’m going to go get this done.’ And I think she was a little scared, obviously. But she didn’t say it.”
A strength that her coach, Diana Brewer, says is contagious.
“It’s contagious,” Brewer said. “It’s like it’s an infectious energy. It’s an infectious spirit. And I would say right away, I noticed that Josie had that.”
A fiery spirit, according to Davidson, that you only see in very few athletes.
“She wouldn’t let me back down from it,” Davidson recalls. “She wouldn’t let me lift my weight for her. Her goal was to achieve an end result that she was going to achieve no matter what. Very few people have the ability to push themselves beyond their known capacity or abilities.
She was a fighter who viewed obstacles as an opportunity to become stronger, whether it was in the hospital or on the field in her red and white No. 35 jersey.
“I didn’t realize when I put this together that it would be the last time I would wear it,” Brewer said. “So I brought it today in hopes that it will pass on to her family.”
The jersey that was sitting on Josi’s shoulders will sit on the bench next year for what would have been Josi’s senior season.
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