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Husband buries Polish volleyball heroine

Volleyball player Agata Mroz was diagnosed with bone marrow disease at 17, but mustered the strength for the sport she loved, helping win two European gold medals for Poland's national women's team.

“With a gold medal around my neck,” she once said, “I thought I had conquered this illness. I expected God to smile on me for good.”

But it wasn’t enough. Several weeks ago, she checked into the hospital to give birth to the healthy daughter doctors warned her not to have.

She then underwent a bone marrow transplant. Again, it wasn’t enough: Two weeks after the procedure, she died at age 26, and was buried on Monday in her hometown, Tarnow.

In the same Roman Catholic church where Mroz married Jacek Olszewski exactly one year before, her newly widowed husband and other family members were joined by weeping townspeople to bid farewell to the young athlete considered one of Poland’s best volleyball players.

“She passed into a different world, to a different team, to the main trainer,” Bishop Marian Florczyk said. “Her book of life has closed.”

Mroz, who died two months after delivering daughter Liliana, was remembered as a heroic figure for her athletic skills on the court and the grace with which she bore her disease.

Mroz was a teenager when she was diagnosed with the bone marrow disease myelodysplastic syndrome, and was able to compete only off-and-on over the years. She helped push the national team to victory in the European volleyball championships in 2003 and 2005.

She quit competing last year and married Olszewski on June 9. By that time, however, she was too ill to take a honeymoon. Blood transfusions marked her recent life; fans hoping to save the popular athlete donated 1,500 liters of blood for her.

Mroz was buried in a simple wooden box ringed by white flowers.

At her graveside, Olszewski vowed to raise a daughter that would make her proud.

“I have to tell you, Agata: I will raise her to be a wonderful girl,” he said.
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