At 5:10 a.m. on a quiet Thursday morning in November, a charter bus full of soccer players and coaches pulled out of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma parking lot and into a still-sleeping Chickasha.

To Dr. Jeannette Loutsch, the fight against cancer is personal. Since she lost both parents to cancer in 2002, Loutsch, assistant professor of biology at USAO, makes it her mission to raise awareness about certain types of cancer and to teach young people how to check for cancerous tissue.

“Feb. 23, 2002, my mom died after a 16-year battle with cancer,” she said, adding that her father died later that year. “That’s why I do it. So someone else doesn’t have to deal with this … It was terrible, and I lived 12 hours away.”