This is Sarah Sumpter's time of year. The air is fresh, the trails alive with color. And recently, on the last Saturday in October, it was almost her day. Six seconds faster, and she would have taken home first place in an all-important cross country race.

She'd pushed the pace from the start, getting in front of the lead pack and challenging the other runners to keep up. The women, wearing their bright college singlets and racing shorts, sprinted lithely across the field to the finish of the UC Riverside cross country course. Sumpter crossed the line for the 6K in 20:33, just a hair behind the leader, in a time good enough to help her team, the UC Davis Aggies, claim its first Big West Conference championship.

And though Sumpter came up a bit short in the end, after a year in which she battled cancer and continued to endure chemo, second was just as sweet as first.

"It has become too easy to let the remarkable nature of this young woman escape me during the day-to-day routine of life in and around a team of distance runners in the throes of what should be best moments of their careers," wrote head coach Drew Wartenburg on his blog. "I have grown to identify Sarah's now willingly shaved head as part of her persona rather than any sort of stigma or emblem associated with cancer survival. ... At every turn, Sarah's willing search for challenge and a longer leash left family, medical professionals, our sports psychologist, teammates, coaches, wondering how to fit this outlier patient-student-athlete into a traditional model for what she was confronting on a daily basis."

Game-changer

Last fall Sumpter went in for a routine doctor's visit. She was in top physical condition, coming off a strong spring on the track and a summer of dedicated training. Sumpter, a state cross country champion in high school, had been recruited by UC Davis to help spearhead its new Division I team, having recently moved up from D-II.

She answered the call with confidence, winning the Big West Conference individual championship in 2009 and earning athlete of the year honors for the school.

By all indications, 2010 should have been a breakthrough for the promising collegiate athlete. But that afternoon doctor's visit changed everything. After undergoing a battery of tests, the diagnosis landed like a brick: Sumpter had brain cancer.