FAIRFIELD -- The red baseball hat with the letters "SHU" stitched in white was pulled down low over the head of Elizabeth Luckie, "Bippy" to her friends, as she sat herself down in a chair in the lobby of the Pitt Center. The hat was covering up a tight, black skull cap, which was covering up the fact that, at the moment, Luckie doesn't have any hair.

The hair was lost after the first couple of rounds of chemotherapy. Luckie is halfway through a six-session cycle of treatment. After that, she'll have seven weeks of radiation. And after that, if all goes well (and the doctors are fully optimistic that everything will go well) there will be "¦ nothing. The cancer will be gone and Luckie can go back to living a normal life.

If anyone can go back to being normal after surviving cancer.

But that's what Luckie wants to try to do. It has been a long, emotional five-plus months for the co-head women's softball coach at Sacred Heart University. One day, she was as healthy as anyone could be, feeling fine and looking forward to another season of coaching the Pioneers, and the next "¦ she was standing in front of a tidal wave of fear, emotion, anger, depression. It all hit her in the initial seconds after the doctor told her that the lump in her right breast was cancerous. And that the cancer had spread to her lymph node.

"You could put your head in the sand and say, 'Why me? Why me?' But I'm not like that," Luckie said Tuesday morning, her eyes sparkling as bright as the sun outside. "I've lost my hair but they (the team) didn't care. I was still Bippy and I became inspired and confident because of how they treated me and still respected me. I wasn't a different Bippy, I was just "¦ Bippy. They've inspired me, those kids."

And in the midst of this hardship with their coach, the Pioneers have found inspiration. On Friday, SHU (25-26) will take on Washington in the opening round of the NCAA Amherst (Mass.) Regional. The team is riding a 12-game win streak, including a 4-0 win over Long Island in the Northeast Conference tournament championship.

It was the first time that the Pioneers had participated in the NEC tournament, let alone sweep the three games (beating Robert Morris, Monmouth and LIU), to make the NCAA Division I tournament for the first time.

"This has been so special," Luckie, 46, said, her voice trembling ever so slightly. "Usually I'm a little nervous (before games) but this time, I wasn't nervous. For some reason we all knew that we were going to do this. Looking in the girls' eyes "¦ they were on a mission and they were not going to lose this tournament. There was a higher power involved. I know there was."

Cancer has not been kind to Luckie in the past. A year after she graduated from Sacred Heart as one of the best softball players in program history, her mother, Catherine, died of breast cancer in 1986. She was just 53.

Once she turned 40, Luckie did all the right things, including getting her yearly mammograms. Then in August of 2008, her annual mammogram showed a small spot, which appeared to be a calcification. The doctors scheduled another mammogram for six months.

When that result came back, the spot had gotten bigger. A biopsy revealed cancer. And the cancer had spread.

"It was that quick," Luckie said.

At first Luckie thought about not telling her team about the cancer, but she knew they would find out. So she told them. Everything. Of course, they were very upset. But something else happened.

The team bonded, closer and tighter than anyone could have imagined.

The girls ordered pink rubber bracelets that say "Bippy's Pack" and "Celebrate Courage" on them. The team has worn those bracelets for every game, all 51 of them. They have tried to keep a normal routine, which has been hard at times, but Luckie can thank her former teammate and longtime co-head coach Pam London and assistant Vicky White for keeping everything on an even keel.

"Obviously, it's been a shock. I've gone through all the (emotional) stages, but I think selfishly, if I had to get cancer, I'm glad it was during softball season," she said. "Because that was the reason for me to make sure that I was OK, so I could make sure the girls were OK."

And the girls are more than OK. They're inspired.

"Bippy is an inspiration for all of us out there every day," senior right fielder Jessica Perez said. "We go through battles in life and she's battling for her own life right now. Just seeing her out there has pushed us to where we are today. She's definitely a fighter."

A fighter with, apparently, some attitude.

"I had a wig that I wore once in a while when I needed to and I also had a hat with hair, but I was like, 'You know what? Screw it.' I don't care," Luckie said. "This is what it is. If I can deal with it, so can everyone else."

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