Ronalda Pierce was a Florida State University

Florida State University

The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...

 basketball

Basketball

Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...

 player who died of an aneurysm

Aneurysm

An aneurysm or aneurism is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. Aneurysms can commonly occur in arteries at the base of the brain and an aortic aneurysm occurs in the main artery carrying blood from the left ventricle of the heart...

. She was a sophomore, and a likely candidate to join the Women's National Basketball Association

Women's National Basketball Association

The Women's National Basketball Association is a women's professional basketball league in the United States. It currently is composed of twelve teams. The league was founded on April 24, 1996 as the women's counterpart to the National Basketball Association...

 in 2007.

On the morning of Tuesday, June 8, Pierce's roommate found her in bed breathing uneasily and could not wake her up. Paramedics transported her to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, where she died a few hours later.

Pierce was 6 feet 5 inches (77 inches) tall. Her family has a history of heart

Human heart

The human heart is a muscular organ that provides a continuous blood circulation through the cardiac cycle and is one of the most vital organs in the human body...

 and brain

Human brain

The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...

 diseases. It is believed that her aneurysm, located on her aorta, resulted from a genetic disorder called Marfan syndrome

Marfan syndrome

Marfan syndrome is a genetic disorder of the connective tissue. People with Marfan's tend to be unusually tall, with long limbs and long, thin fingers....

. Pierce was 19 years old.