His survival story had already been written: in the span of a year, former Washington State offensive lineman Riley Sorenson, weathered the deaths of both his parents at separate times, fought through a bout of testicular cancer and surgery, and recovered in time to play out his senior season with the Cougars.
But that was last year.
With his WSU football career in the rearview mirror and his college degree almost in hand, this year, for Sorenson, was supposed to be about moving on. Or as his girlfriend Elisabeth Haffner puts it, “We thought we were going to start our lives this summer.