Lauren Hill gets Upper Deck card, conference honors

Lauren Hill, the Mount St. Joseph University freshman basketball player who has helped to raise more than $1 million in donations as she battles DIPG - a rare and terminal form of brain cancer - has her own Upper Deck rookie card.

Hill's card is part of Upper Deck's Heroic Inspirations series. Here's a photo, courtesy of Upper Deck:

The card is available on Lauren's The Cure Starts Now website. It can be purchased for $10 - or $50 for an autographed version - with all proceeds going to the charity. (The signatures are done on stickers, and shipping of the cards is only available to the U.S.)

The back of the card:

Also, Mount St. Joseph announced that Hill was named to the Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference first team.

Last week, Hill celebrated this past basketball season with her MSJ teammates at the team's end-of-season banquet.

Hill also was honored during Gov. John Kasich's State of the State address with the Governor's Courage Award.

In addition, she was to be honored today (March 4) as the 2014 Spirit of Cincinnati USA Ambassador by the Cincinnati USA Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The Cure Starts Now continues to accept donations at www.Layup4Lauren.org or by calling 513-326-3845. Donations can also be mailed to The Cure Starts Now; 10280 Chester Road; Cincinnati, OH 45215.

In December, Perfect North Slopes in Lawrenceburg hosted a Rail Jam with Olympic bronze medalist Nick Goepper, with all proceeds benefitting The Cure Starts Now.

Hill has been honored by several local teams and schools during her courageous battle. In November, Lawrenceburg High School retired her No. 22 jersey. A banner with Hill's No. 22 jersey was unveiled during a halftime ceremony.

When Hill's family wrote in December that her playing career at Mount St. Joseph University was complete, it announced that she would remain an honorary coach for the team, according to a recent email from head coach Dan Benjamin.

Paul Daugherty wrote that Lauren "has engaged us like no one else."

In November, Hill scored a layup against Bethany College in a game at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, near Cleveland.

The Associated Press had reported just days earlier that it was unlikely that Hill would play in another game.

Earlier, Hill thanked an audience at Mount St. Joseph for supporting her, as a check for $58,776 was presented to The Cure Starts Now Foundation for her first college basketball game, in which she scored a pair of baskets and raised money and awareness for DIPG.

Officials from Xavier University and MSJ were on hand for the presentation, and confirmed that the total raised in Hill's honor is more than $324,000. The funds go to the International DIPG Registry at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

"I just want to thank everybody for supporting and still supporting - even though the game was two weeks ago," Hill said as she addressed the crowd. "I'm just still in shock. It's kind of like walking through a dream ... a good dream."

The UC women's basketball team honored Lauren Hill on Nov. 7 during its exhibition game at Fifth Third Arena.

Lauren Hill threw a party at Xavier on Nov. 2, wrote Paul Daugherty. The rest of us got the gifts.