As she took to the mat, Danielle Lappage flopped, scrambled but refused to yield. Coach George Grant had instructed his wrestlers in practice that day to pin each other. Danielle was in Grade 8.
As she took to the mat, Danielle Lappage flopped, scrambled but refused to yield.
Coach George Grant had instructed his wrestlers in practice that day to pin each other. Danielle was in Grade 8. Her male opponent, in Grade 11, was bigger, stronger, and could toss her around and score points that would have counted in a real match. But he couldn't demonstrate control and put both her shoulders on the floor. So he tried telling her to give up.
"And she goes, 'I'm not going to lose to you. Or anybody here,'" Grant says, cadence slow, tone severe. He couldn't help being taken aback by the statement. "It was with such conviction that she wasn't going to get pinned."
In Grant's memory, that was the first time he knew there was something special about this small- town girl.
Two months after the biggest victory of her career, Danielle is home, on a sunny day in February with a chinook wind blowing through. She's just finished a workout at the Community Learning Campus gym.
Danielle, 25, was introduced to wrestling in middle school. She was like most other kids just trying the sport out. Practices were fun, nothing too intense. It was all about playing, laughing and spending time with friends. Those were the reasons she kept coming back.
"It was just a lunchtime thing. I wasn't really that serious about it. I was always pretty good at wrestling because I was strong and I was in swimming and gymnastics before," Danielle says.
The Lappage family home says more about Danielle's early years. In the basement, her mom Val thumbs through scrapbooks containing photos, theatreer programs, news clippings and ribbons chronicling the lives of her four children.
Danielle, Val's second-oldest, was a natural athlete. In addition to swimming and gymnastics, she played volleyball, rugby and basketball, excelling at them all. The trophies and medals in her home come from multiple sports.
She always liked winning — and as her parents recall, could not stand to lose. As a child, Danielle would hide in her room until the sting of finishing anywhere but first wore off.
While Val relives the memories, Danielle's father Bob stands watching.
"Holy crap, everything. Tests in school — she was second in the class and didn't like it because some guy beat her," Bob says.
The parents say they knew their daughter would become a high achiever because of her competitive drive. Where that came from is a mystery.
"It comes from just being her, I guess. We try to figure that out all the time," Val says. "Everything had to be perfect. I knew she would become something big because that's the way she was her whole life."
When Danielle made her first appearance at the national wrestling championship in Grade 9, the results were not good enough. She finished seventh.
After a six-month season, coach Grant says she was heartbroken having fallen so short.
"(But) in the following year, she just really filled in the missing pieces of the puzzle," he says.
Enter Clive Llewellyn, former Olympian and national champion. In 1976, he wrestled for Canada at the Montreal Olympics. He also qualified for the boycotted Moscow Games. Today, he heads a Calgary law practice and serves as a director for Wrestling Canada.
Llewellyn, then coaching at his own club, met Danielle in Grade 10 at one of the many tournaments during the high school season. He asked Grant if he'd mind letting him train her. No problem.
"I said, 'most definitely.' I'm taking her as far as I can get her, but she needs more coaching. She needs better coaching — and that's what he provided, that little extra on top," Grant says.
Grant never hesitated to let somebody else coach his rising star. There wasn't a chance he'd turn down an offer from someone with Llewellyn's expertise.
"There are a lot of coaches who are too protective of their self-image. George has always been willing to say, 'I didn't know that, go ask him.' And that's what makes him a top-level coach and I mean that," Llewellyn says.
That year turned out to be pivotal for Danielle. She started taking wrestling seriously. Val drove her down Highway 2 multiple nights each week to train in Calgary, waiting in the car until she finished. The mornings after, Danielle would wake up for Grant's 6:30 a.m. practices at Olds High School.
"Not once did she balk at it and say, 'this is too tough, I need some time off,'" Grant says. "It seemed like the more busy she was, the more focused she became."
With Llewellyn in her ear, Danielle learned to dream big, dream that she could become a national champion.
"If other people said that to you but they don't have the wrestling medals and the wrestling successes to back up what they're saying, I appreciate that — but it's hard to believe what they're saying," she says.
"He said that to me so I believed him. And I think that made me believe in myself, hearing somebody with such high achievements in the sport believe in me."
In 2006, she became a Cadet national champion. She might have been a multi-sport athlete throughout high school, but wrestling became her primary one. The next year, she won bronze at the Juvenile nationals.
Danielle's senior year in 2008 was special for Grant's' Spartans team. At the national championship in Saskatoon, she was one of only three girls representing Olds. Against clubs with far bigger women's rosters, she, Hayley Smith, and Jen Wickwire scored enough points to finish fourth overall in the country, with Danielle winning gold.
"I think that's what hooked me, seeing that I could be successful, not just on a provincial scale but on a national one and dreams grew from there, I guess," Danielle says.
Calgary seemed like the obvious choice after high school. The Dinos had one of the top women's wrestling programs in the country, with the added benefit of being close to home. Instead, on Llewellyn's advice, Danielle picked the Simon Fraser University Clan and majored in criminology.
"He just wanted me to know that I wasn't confined to that choice, to the Calgary choice. We had a tournament in Vancouver in my Grade 12 year and he arranged for us to go to breakfast with (SFU coach) Mike Jones and that's how that started," she says.
Jones described her as the ideal recruit: driven, a good athlete and as an honour roll student in high school, strong academically as well — the perfect fit.
"You never know if they can take the training load that you're going to put them through, or how they're going to react to a new school or situation. But she was almost instantly assimilated into it," he says.
Going to SFU gave Danielle international experience. The Clan competed in the Women's College Wrestling Association, a U.S. league. In 2012, the school became the first non-U.S. member in the NCAA Division II.
"I think it helped me out a lot because in Canada, there's only so many women wrestlers. So instead of wrestling the same women over and over again, it allowed me to wrestle a lot of different people," she says.
She found success at the next level, winning collegiate, national and international championships.
After graduating in 2013, Danielle stayed at SFU, pursuing her master's degree in criminology. She continued to wrestle with the Burnaby Mountain Wrestling Club. She earned a spot on Canada's Senior National Team in 2014 when she defeated Wetaskiwin native Justine Bouchard at the trials competition.
Bouchard was both Danielle's hero and nemesis. Four years older, Bouchard was a gold medallist at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She also beat Danielle more times than any other opponent, dating back to their high school years.
"I wanted to be in her spot. I wanted to be the provincial champ. I wanted to be the national champ. I wanted to be the senior national champ. She was someone I was always chasing, to catch up with all through my varsity career," Danielle says.
More victories followed in 2014, with gold medals at the World University Games and Commonwealth Games.
Then a devastating setback. Danielle tore the ACL in her right knee in practice that October.
"People either don't come back from it or they come back and they're worse, they're slower, always hesitant about their knee," she says.
She missed the senior national championship and the 2015 Pan Am Games while recovering from knee surgery. During that time, Ontario's Braxton Stone-Papadopoulos, only 20 years old, won both competitions in Danielle's 63-kilogram weight class. The Scarborough, Ont. wrestler then earned Canada an Olympic berth while at the World Championships.
Danielle spent more than a year getting into the best shape possible, starting with jogging, then grappling above the waist, wrestling with lighter partners before working up to her own weight class without restrictions.
There were moments of doubt. Recovering from an ACL injury has always been as mental as it is physical. Danielle credits a strong support network that believed she would return to form, even when she didn't.
Last December, 14 months after her injury, she entered the tournament that decided who would represent Canada in Rio de Janeiro as an unranked wrestler. She breezed through the competition, winning six straight matches, two of them against Stone-Papadopoulos, the No.1 seed.
Today, everywhere you go, people are talking about her. At the schools she attended, town council, community events, and for one reason: Danielle became the first person from Olds to qualify for the Olympic Games.
Is Danielle Lappage one of the greatest homegrown athletes this town has ever produced? Considering her previous international success, and now the chance to represent Canada on the world's biggest stage, George Grant, who has taught at Olds High School for 20 years, certainly thinks so.
"She definitely takes a spot up there. She would be one of the most successful athletes that haves come out of Olds. But comparing different sports is so difficult to do. In wrestling, there's so few competitors so it makes it tougher in some regards to get good competition, to get good training," he says.
"I fully expect Danielle will eventually end up in the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame and possibly the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and even in Calgary at the Olympic Sports Hall of Fame."
But what to do about it here? Town hall has wondered the same thing, at one point proposing to erect low walls in Centennial Park where commemorative ornaments could be hung. That portion of the park's revitalization plan was on the docket but slashed during budget cuts, an effect of the province's poor economy.
"I think it would be neat to have a wall of fame somewhere, be it at the town office or maybe here at the Ralph Klein Centre," Grant says. "I'm sure there would be a lot of names that would go up there that many people, including myself, have forgotten over the years or didn't know at all."
Despite the heights she's climbing, Danielle keeps coming home. And people notice. They stop and greet her, congratulate her, take pictures with her. Strangers who come asking for her autograph haven't turned her into that one friend everybody has, the one you grow up with but who tastes success and is then suddenly too busy, too important to call or visit.
Sure, her family is here. That's the obvious reason. But there are more. She names Tedd Charbonneau, owner of Tedds Food Mart, the convenience store and gas bar she worked at since she was 13 years old until moving away. He was like a second dad to her, she says.
Off the top of her head, Danielle also lists teachers, friends, everybody she tries to catch up with when she can.
"It's the best little town there is. And it's funny because … on the national team and the university team, everybody knows me as Danielle, she's from Olds," she says.
"I feel so lucky because the other girls on the team … don't have that support, that recognition that I'm getting because I'm from Olds. And they all know that and (talk) all the time about how cool it is."
In Llewellyn's mind, coming from a small town is also an advantage, where neighbours rally behind you, cheer for you, and local media covers your achievements.
"If Danielle was in Calgary, nobody knows it," he says. "No, most top-level athletes come out of small towns, like Olds."
Now the toughest part;, seizing the moment while her window of opportunity is open. Where she's going, only a select few of her friends and family can follow. And above all, the clock is running; Danielle won't be a wrestler forever.
In the face of it, she remains optimistic.
"It's incredible, the support I'm getting from this town. Bbut it's going to be a hard, hard tournament and I honestly do think I can do well and I think I can bring home a medal," she says.
"If they know I'm doing everything I can do, I'm putting everything I can into it, hopefully they'll be proud;, medal or no medal."
There's no quit in that small- town girl. Once just trying to keep her back off the mat, now a woman driven to make her home proud. Once scrawny, now strong. But still believing. And fighting.
