ORLANDO, Fla. — Nahla Turner’s time at UCF is over, but the soccer field still feels like home.

“My house, not allowed in it, no trespassing,” Turner said, laughing as she walked in between the goal posts on an empty UCF soccer field.

“I remember a coach telling me goalkeeper fits my personality because I’m reckless,” Turner said. “So I was like, 'Hey, I guess so.' ”

As a goalkeeper, Turner will do whatever it takes to make the save, even when the one who needs saving is herself.

“It was during summer practice or summer training, voluntary, and I thought that maybe I dove on it wrong,” Turner remembered.

For Turner, the pain started in her left hip during summer 2019. The pain eventually caused her to use crutches, then a wheelchair. By December, she got a biopsy. She remembers exactly where she was when she got the news she feared.

“I was on the soccer field, the game field, when I got the call,” Turner said. “I knew they were going to tell me something, but I didn’t know what it was.”

She had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a blood cancer that had spread to her bones.

“I felt hopeless, like my world was over,” Turner said. “When you hear a cancer diagnosis, you automatically think it’s something terminal, something deadly, which it could have been.”

Turner moved back home to Frisco, Texas, to be with her family during treatment. She underwent six months of chemotherapy and radiation.

“It’s not something you can imagine — from fatigue nausea, confusion,” Turner said. “It’s called chemo brain. You can’t remember anything to save your life.”

Despite the side effects, Turner continued to take UCF classes. She even made the Dean’s list. She returned to school and the team in August 2020, and by October, she was deemed cancer-free.

“It felt liberating,” Turner said. “Like a weight was finally lifted and I could actually live life normally.”

She spent the season getting back in shape because the steroid medication she was on had caused her to gain 35 pounds. On senior night, UCF’s final game, she got the start.

“It felt like a dream, like I was in some type of dream,” Turner said.  “Some type of weird reality. I didn’t know I would get here, didn’t know I’d be in this stage ever again, just because of my cancer diagnosis. It was an amazing feeling honestly.”

Turner is now a graduate and pursuing a professional soccer career. Her UCF chapter is over, but the journey is far from finished.

“It makes me, you know, take life, view it as a beautiful gift,” Turner said. “Not everyone has that luxury to wake up every day, and it teaches me to not take things for granted and realize tomorrow might be your last day so live like that.”