A dare to try wrestling leads to athlete of year honour
Michelle Fazzari went for mat despite dad’s passion for speedskating
HAD THINGS GONE just a little differently, we might be watching her on TV from Pyeongchang today, instead of talking about her in Hamilton.
See, as a girl of about eight, Michelle Fazzari’s dad signed her up for speedskating. It was his passion, she says. And as an athletic child, she was pretty good at it. So she kept at it, winter after winter, for years getting faster and faster.
The trouble was, she never really loved it as much as Dad did.
When as a young teenager she realized that, the dream of one day whipping around the Olympic oval — if it ever really existed — came to a snow-sprayed halt.
“I was so sick of going in a circle,” she laughs.
Two years and not much in the way of sports later, she tried out for her high school’s wrestling team on a dare. And that launched a career that brought us to Thursday evening, when Fazzari was named Golden Horseshoe Athlete of the Year for her
excellence on the mat in a remarkable 2017.
Hers was the kind of anno perfectus (perfect year) TV folks make soft-focus, piano-tinkling features about.
“I think it’s significant because you see what role you’ve played in the community,” she says of the prize.
Fazzari claimed the award over racquetball legend Mike Green, who recently won his 20th and 21st national championship, establishing him as the greatest this country has ever produced; and McMaster basketball legend Danielle Boiago, who set school scoring records en route to being named Ontario and Canada’s player of the year.
Any of the three could have won and their victory easily defended.
However, Fazzari’s success on the world stage set her apart. And her story didn’t hurt, either.
To fully tell it, even in condensed Reader’s Digest terms, we have to go back to 2014, about a year prior to the Pan Am Games in Toronto. While at the top of her game and feeling great about where she was, an opponent cranked her leg in two different directions at the same time, shredding her knee.
She tried to rehab, but it didn’t work. By the time surgery rolled around, she had just three weeks to recover for the Pam Ams. Unable to even bend her knee, she walked onto the mat, lost and was then
medically disqualified. Yet, not long after, she somehow pulled out a win at Olympic qualifying and made it to Rio only to suffer a soul-crushing loss in the Round of 16 when she got there.
And with that, she was done. Wrestling had consumed her for months leading up to those Olympics and she was spent.
For months, she went nowhere near a mat. Melissa the wrestler was now Melissa the ex-wrestler.
So how then, is she the area’s athlete of the year?
Well, roughly six months after hanging up her singlet, the 30-year-old — who was classmates with Edmonton Oilers’ goalie Cam Talbot from kindergarten to Grade 8 at St. Patrick’s in Caledonia, and who roomed with the cousin of three-time finalist and 2012 winner Melissa Tancredi at university — decided she wanted to get back in shape while simultaneously finding out if there was any love for the sport still in the tank.
It turns out there was.
A month after she re-fired the engines, she won an international event.
A couple months after that, she did well at another.
And then in August, she won her first medal at a world championship, a bronze. Now this capper to the whole thing. While she says she’s thrilled to be recognized — she was once Brock’s athlete of the year, but never anything of this scope — she hopes this will raise the profile of wrestling and maybe resonate with some young girls.
As successful female athletes did to her when she was younger.
“They inspired me,” she says. “I hope this inspires others.”