- [Narrator] Senior Bella Fiorenzo has been putting
the time in to prepare for the rest
of this season her whole life.
Her road to Oxford is filled with twists and tears
and almost never happened.
- I started playing though the YMCA,
so it was kind of the typical, like, rec-league.
I think I was about eight years old.
Probably something my parents just put me in for
to stay busy and see if I picked it up.
I think I was kind of the case where you knew early on,
like, I was probably gonna be playing for most of my life.
It came pretty easy to me, I think I loved the competition,
and I would run around with my red cheeks. (laughs)
I was very competitive.
It became a passion, and I did a few things here and there,
but soccer really took off,
and that's what I stuck with moving forward.
I had an awesome freshman year with my high school team,
and it was one of those years where
it's kind of that team that you remember.
Like, the chemistry we had and the friendships,
and just the flow of the game was so great,
and we were dominating teams.
So that went really well for me,
and then that kind of led into my sophomore year.
- Coach Thompson and I saw her down at Disney.
We didn't know anything about her,
never seen her, any of that kind of stuff.
So we saw her down at Disney,
at Disney is a big soccer showcase,
when she was a sophomore, and she was fantastic.
And someone right away, we put on our list,
and we reached out to her coach,
and Coach Thompson really started a
communication thread with her as much as you can
when they're sophomores and juniors.
And then she got injured.
- And I can remember pretty vividly, because
beginning of the game, not too far into it,
and I think I had just started making a run into space,
and my teammate had played it over the top,
and as I was approaching the ball,
I probably, like, kind of planted with my right leg
and then was basically sandwiched
by two girls on both sides.
And it was sort of that, like, immediate pain,
kind of screamed out loud a little bit and just went down.
I had gone to the doctor, they said it was a bone bruise,
which it probably was just from the impact.
Started off at a physical therapist who was kind of thinking
it was more of a MCL issue, so not ACL related.
Was doing rehab for a couple weeks,
and I would always go back, and just the flexion
and extension wasn't getting better.
It was like they could force it in that session,
but then I would come back,
and it would be swollen and irritated.
And got an MRI and figured out that I'd torn my ACL.
Took, like, the typical six months recovery.
I was in okay spirits.
I mean, it happens with this sport a lot,
and I think it wasn't out of the ordinary,
and it was something that I felt like I could conquer,
just based on my play and the love that I had for the sport.
And it wasn't, I think maybe it was August or so, I went
to a practice, and I kind of re-injured it,
where I think it was some sort of one-v-one thing
and just stepped wrong, went down.
So we take another MRI, and in his opinion,
it had been stretched but wasn't grossly unstable,
so it was one of those things where you can try to rehab it
and go back and play and see what happens.
I would rehab, I'd take two months or so,
and then stuff started looking better physically.
I wasn't in as much pain.
This was about the start of junior year,
and I would go back, and I think the first time I was just
playing at a club practice, just turned,
and it would be, like, an instantaneous kind of give out
and a little bit of pain, and then the final time was
about February at a club practice.
I was doing a suicide sprint or something like that,
and it gave out again, and I can still remember
the frustration, just in tears, like,
talking to my parents and being like,
"Something obviously isn't right.
"Like, this should not be happening if I'm, like,
"if my ACL's intact, if everything's good."
So ended up getting a second opinion,
took the very same MRI that I had gotten six months
previously to him, and his reading of it was
that at that point, I had had a torn ACL.
So obviously, the frustrations kind of were pouring in,
saying I just wasted six months.
Like, I haven't been back on the field
since middle of my sophomore year.
Got another MRI, ended up figuring out that I had torn
my lateral meniscus, and then also gotten,
like, cartilage damage on my femur.
So with that comes, like, a basically year-long recovery.
- But we stayed with her.
We stayed with her, and we knew she was a good player,
and she was coming back, and Coach Thompson went
to Michigan and watched her play in a high school game
when she was just back, and we said,
"Okay, we'd like her on our team."
We offered a very small scholarship,
and see if it could happen.
- [Bella] I think during all of it,
I still had a pretty good attitude.
I never viewed soccer as being something
that I was gonna let go just based on an injury.
To me, it wasn't necessarily a career-ending injury.
It was harder than most people had to go through,
but I always viewed going and playing
college soccer as my end goal.
- [Narrator] That end goal would become a reality
for Fiorenzo through her hard work and attitude.
After a freshman campaign that mostly involved getting
her feet back underneath her, Bella doubled down
on her opportunity at Ole Miss
and began turning heads around Oxford.
- [Bella] The summer of my freshman year,
I think I just made a personal choice
to really dedicate myself to the program
and to getting better and improving,
and I went home that summer and worked a ton on my fitness.
It was just a lot of consistent effort,
like, went out there daily.
- [Matt] That summer, total transformation.
Comes back, just looks fantastic.
Again, you could tell, put in all this work by herself.
- I think it was one of those things where I came
into pre-season that following year,
and I was a little bit of a surprise
to my coaches and teammates, because they
didn't necessarily see that coming.
It was a noticeable enough difference
where I had made those strides.
- [Narrator] Now in her senior year
as the lone captain and lynch bin of the Ole Miss midfield,
not even Head Coach Matt Mott could have predicted
the strides Fiorenzo would make as a Rebel.
- I wish I could say I did, but I didn't.
I thought that I'm glad she's here, she's a great kid,
great student, works hard, all those things you want,
but to see her get to this level has been unbelievable.
Bella, the person, is good as there is on a team.
- Bella is the sweetest and loving and caring
and compassionate person that I've ever known.
She has, like, this air about her that's just so,
like, confident and cool and collected,
and it makes everything flow.
She's a great captain.
- [Matt] We have had some great leaders, but they've had
to be in groups of two and three, almost.
Now, we have Bella, and Bella is stand alone.
She's the first time I've ever done this,
and she just clicks all the boxes.
She does everything you want out of a captain.
- Bella is, like, the most perfect captain ever,
and everyone loves her.
Bella is Matt's favorite, probably,
so she's just so awesome.
She's one of the most positive people I know.
She just, like, holds herself very well,
and so she just has perfect
attributes of what our team is.
- She just has been one of those people for me
that I know that if I need to go have a tough conversation,
or if I need to just have hang out and wanna chill,
that she's gonna be that person that is there for me.
- [Matt] Everybody respects her.
They respect her work great.
They respect her dedication, but she's just somebody
that you gravitate to, that the players understand
what they're getting from her.
They understand that she's got their back.
She's done a great job of building these relationships
with the young guys, and again, if we had a Mount Rushmore,
she is smack dab in the middle.
- There's kind of a common theme going on that I've,
I guess, taken away from this whole experience,
is that the coaches and the people here, I think,
believed in me before I even believed in myself.
And then also, just pushing me as a player and as a leader,
and coming to me with this opportunity,
and truly giving me the confidence, and saying,
"We think you can take on this role."
I still find myself second guessing it,
but I hope that I'm doing a good job,
and that I've (laughs) earned it, at least.
- She's just a special, special individual,
and one I'm so glad she's an Ole Miss Rebel.
(upbeat music)