A great belated graduation present
Tatti is St. Catharines co-athlete of the year in final season at Brock
“I think that’s where a lot of coaches miss the mark. They don’t realize that your athletes want to work harder for you when you are there for them.” MELISSA TATTI ST. CATHARINES 2020 CO-ATHLETE OF THE YEAR
Melissa Tatti credits Mike Rao for keeping her from making a ewe turn in her university basketball career.
Instead of playing out her eligibility with the Brock Badgers, she had all but decided on moving to Toronto and playing her final two seasons with the Ryerson Rams. The Badgers were without a head coach at the time and Ryerson was offering a fashion communications course that was right up the budding YouTube entrepreneur’s alley.
“I was kind of done with basketball because there were some issues going on at Brock, and they (Ryerson) pretty much gave me a spot on that team already,” the 24-year-old recalled in an interview from her home in Ancaster.
Tatti began reconsidering whether she would transfer when Rao was named interim head coach of the women’s team for the 2018-19 season. She first met the retired high school teacher when he was an assistant on the men’s team and found him to be “so warm and welcoming.”
“He was always just a fun guy to be around,” Tatti said. “I just really enjoyed his company because we would also be on bus rides and stuff like that.
“I don’t know, he just seemed like the perfect fit for me.”
She didn’t mind that Rao was decidedly old school after 36 years coaching boys basketball at Notre Dame College School in Welland.
“My dad (Tally) was my coach for a very long time, my entire career up until university, and he (Rao) has the same message that my dad taught me,” Tatti said. “It was nothing new to me and maybe that’s what drew me back to Brock.
“There so many similarities between the two of them.”
By now, anyone who has followed the Brock women and their remarkable 2019-20 season knows the rest of the story. Besides winning their second Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championship and first since 1983, the Badgers returned home from nationals in Ottawa with a silver medal.
A setback to the No. 1 seed Saskatchewan Huskies in the final was their only loss in the playoffs after going 17-5 in league play.
The program’s best finish ever allowed Tatti to end her five- year U Sports career in storybook fashion.
She was named OUA player of the year, a tournament all-star at nationals and along with teammate Sam Keltos St. Catharines co-athletes of the year for 2020.
Rao was selected St. Catharines sportsperson of the year on top of receiving national, provincial and school coaching accolades.
“If you would have told me that this was going to happen, I would have probably laughed,” Tatti said in recalling two years before “the team wasn’t very good.”
“I was going to play basketball just for fun, see what happens. Just finish off my career,” she said.
“I did not expect this at all.” Tatti, who averaged 18.1 points and 4.8 rounds at Brock during the regular season, called Rao’s role integral to the team’s success.
“It definitely started with Rao. He just believed in us,” she said. “It’s so difficult to explain to people what it was but his coaching method and the way he went about things just makes you want to work harder as an athlete for him,” she added.
“I think that’s where a lot of coaches miss the mark. They don’t realize that your athletes want to work harder for you when you are there for them.”
Tatti, a five-foot-four point guard, combined with Keltos, a six-foot-three centre, to provide a potent 1-2 offensive punch that had Brock on a fivegame winning streak heading into the gold-medal game against Saskatchewan.
Neither player had the greatest experience coming into the championship season. Tatti was only a year removed from almost leaving Brock and Keltos, a St. Catharines native, was back home after three seasons playing Division 1 at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
“I think that’s where the chemistry started. We didn’t really care about who scored most or who was taking more shots. Tatti said. “We were just there to win. Everyone was like, ‘How come you didn’t score 40 points in the final game?’ I could not have been happier that she scored 40 points in the OUA final.”
Since becoming teammates, the two have proved naysayers wrong.
“I think people expected us not to click,” Tatti said. “They thought that we would not get along, but since Day 1 she’s been a great friend and I think that definitely has a lot to do with it.”
She would trade all the accolades for the chance to replay the final against Saskatchewan.
“For sure, I would want to play them again, but they’re a very good team,” Tatti said. “I wouldn’t say I’m completely satisfied with second but, just because of how great a team Saskatchewan was, I think we did the best that we have.
“They just had player after player after player coming off the bench.”
Right now, she is done with basketball because of the time she needs to devote to her online business. Threads Obsessed, a YouTube channel on which she resells vintage clothing that she buys in thrift stores, has 160,000 followers.
“It’s going really well. In COVID, a lot of people are online shopping. It’s actually going well for me right now,” she said.
Thoughts about playing pro basketball overseas are tempered by worries that may take away from the way she ended her U Sports career.
“We ended on such a good note, I feel like it was such a great ending to my story. I don’t want to try something a little bit new or different that’s going to take that love away again,” she said. “I’m completely satisfied.
“I couldn’t be happier with the way things ended.”