Olympics: How Scotts Valley wrestler Dom Parrish overcame family tragedy to rise up U.S. wrestling ranks

Dom Parrish didn't start wrestling until her sister's heart attack as a seventh-grader. Now they inspire each other.

Dom Parrish’s path from Scotts Valley to the Olympics started on a trampoline.

She was 3 when her dad, Mike, and mom, Susan, decided a 14-foot trampoline would be fun for the whole family. Living on 16 acres nestled in the woods, they had plenty of space for it.

They chose their living room.

“It dominates the room,” Mike said. “Their friends would come over after school and walk in the door and their mouths would drop.”

The trampoline is where Dom’s older sister, Tatiana, first learned how to flex her superiority with mean body slams and convincing pins.

Looking back, this was the beginning of Dom’s training in wrestling, a sport she learned to master over the next 20 years. Now at the top, Dom, 27, is heading to the Paris Olympics as a gold medal contender this summer.

In the beginning, it looked like Tatiana might be the wrestler in the family.

“She’s far meaner than her sister,” Mike said. “She holds a grudge.”

Said Dom: “She’d beat me up, put me on the ground, spit on my face, things good siblings do. I was her training partner but it was never organized. My dad was like, ‘She’s tough enough.’ He took her to some county local wrestling tournaments to see how she could do.

“And then my sister had a heart transplant.”

Tatiana saw her wrestling days end in an instant. Born with congenital heart disease, she was in the middle of her seventh-grade classroom when she suffered a massive cardiac arrest.

A history teacher, Tom Milnes, jumped into action to keep Tatiana alive. She was rushed to the nearest hospital, where she was stabilized and later transferred to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford.

“I got to sleep in my bed twice over the next six months,” Mike said. “She almost died three times. The surgeon had to manually pump her heart with his hand. It got worse.”

While Mike and Susan were in Stanford with Tatiana, Dom and her brothers, Liam and Bleys, leaned on the generosity of family friends and tried to find solace in school.

A friend of Dom’s suggested she sign up for wrestling. Dom had no interest. But when the sign-up sheet went up, her friend signed her up anyway.

Afraid to get in trouble, Dom went to wrestling practice. She hasn’t stopped wrestling since.

“I don’t remember loving it,” she said. “I just kept doing it.”

It was music to Mike’s ears.

“Physical activity is key in the face of depression and anxiety,” he said. “You’re just hanging out with your friends, not focusing on blood, knives or needles.”

He’d drive back and forth from Stanford to Scotts Valley for Dom’s wrestling meets, soaking in every minute of his daughter on the mat.

“I felt grateful that I could do it,” Dom said. “It’s strange looking back now. I remember my dad coming to some of my dual meets in sixth grade. And I know my sister was in the hospital so it was kind of nice to have something else to focus on that doesn’t mean as much. It was just supposed to be fun.”

Dom doesn’t remember having success in those early days.

“I don’t know if I was good, but I don’t think I was bad,” she said. “Having siblings beat up on you, I’m used to this.”

Finally, after six months in critical care, Tatiana received a heart transplant. She was 14 and “made a miraculous recovery,” Mike said.

Tatiana returned to junior high school in Scotts Valley. A year older than her sister, they hung out sometimes, but mostly kept to their respective cliques.

“We were different people,” Dom said. “She was in the teenage angst phase. I was a goody-two-shoes. I went to wrestling practice and went to school. I was boring in high school.”

Mike began coaching with the late Ken Kannegaard, longtime Scotts Valley wrestling coach and Mike’s good friend. They recruited anybody they could to join Dom on the girls team. But at many tournaments, the girls had to wrestle the boys.

“When Dom started wrestling it was like a fish to water,” he said. “She was good at it. She liked beating up on the boys.”

Dom finished second in states her sophomore year, then went undefeated her junior and senior years to win back-to-back California state titles.

“Sometimes there’d be a boys tournament on Saturday and girls on Sunday, so they’d wrestle back to back,” Mike said. “She finished with 100 wins against boys in California.”

Mike helped her fill out an application to Simon Fraser University, a school in Vancouver that was one of the few with a standout women’s wrestling program and competed in the NCAA.

Her first year, “I got my (expletive) handed to me,” she said. “These girls were not playing around. They were mean, in a good way. That’s when I started to get better.”

Dom’s sophomore year, Tatiana decided to transfer to SFU and join her sister.

“It was really nice to know she was around,” Tatiana said. “If I needed her, she was there.”

Dom was an All-American all four years, winning a national title her last two years. After college, she started going to international competitions and won those, too.

In 2022, when she was 25, she won gold at the Pan American Games and captured a world championship in the 116-pound weight class.

“It’s her belief in herself that makes her so great,” said Dom’s personal coach, Oregon State University’s Nate Engel.

Dom says it took time to mature as a person, to let go of the need to win and just enjoy the sport.

“She used to have sports-induced anxiety where she needed an inhaler, but we got past it,” Mike said.

It’s Dom’s perseverance that Tatiana admires most.

“She allows herself to be upset when she loses or feels down, but she works on it and gets up and keeps going,” Tatiana said. “That inspires me.”

This past April, Olympic qualifiers were in Pennsylvania. Most of the family couldn’t attend, so it was Tatiana who drove seven hours from their Ottawa home to be in the stands.

“I’m really glad I did,” Tatiana said.

When Dom finished her final match, securing her place in the Olympics, Dom went running over and gave her sister a hug.

“I was more shocked than she was,” Tatiana said.

In Paris, the whole family will be there.

“There’s a lot to be grateful for,” Dom said. “It’s interesting, over the last couple years, Tatiana and I have gotten pretty close. Family makes you who you are, for better or worse.”

Tatiana recently celebrated the 15-year anniversary of her new heart.

“I’ve had this one longer than my old one,” she said.

She’s not supposed to wrestle anymore, but every once in a while she’ll try to poke Dom and see if she wants to fight.

In one quick swoop, Dom will pick her up and drop her back to the ground.

The little sister is now in charge.

“Hard work eventually pays off,” Tatiana said. “Just look at Dom.”