Saverina Scozzari is an athlete marketer and public relations specialist with several prominent NHL players as clients.Carlos Osorio/The Globe and Mail
Before she was born, an ultrasound showed that Saverina Scozzari’s kidneys were underdeveloped. Doctors told her parents she wouldn’t live to see her first birthday.
Her mother, although scared, refused to think like that.
“She was born to fight,” Amelia Scozzari says. “She had to fight right from the beginning.”
And fight she has, right through childhood, through puberty and into early adulthood. Through a combination of carefully controlled diet, lifestyle changes and hard work, Saverina Scozzari has been able to avoid dialysis. Three times, the Hamilton native was set to get a new kidney – about 4,000 Canadians are on a wait list for a transplant – and three times the transplant was postponed. But now, with her kidney function down to 10 per cent, the time has come.
Scozzari, an athlete-marketing and public-relations specialist with clients who play in the NHL, is now 25, and eager for the new year and a new lease on life. She is set to receive a new kidney at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton next month. Her dad, John, is her living donor.
“She is a warrior,” her mother says.
Amelia, who had previously miscarried, was terrified when she learned that Saverina, still in the womb, was seriously ill. “I went numb,” she says. “I told my husband that if she survives this, she will become an advocate for others. I knew she was special.”
Saverina was born without complications.
The Scozzaris knew early on that their daughter would need a transplant and maybe two. “It has been in our heads for 25 years,” Amelia says. “We were told by the time she was nine or 10 that this would happen. That she made it to 25 without needing one is a testament to her drive.”
And her drive? It’s developed into a career.
Among many other players, Scozzari has worked with Tyler Seguin of the Dallas Stars, Claude Giroux and Cam Talbot of the Ottawa Senators and counts Vincent Trocheck of the New York Rangers, goalie Jonathan Bernier, most recently of the New Jersey Devils, and former NHL left wing Shayne Corson among her clients.
“She does a lot for us,” Trocheck said. “She is extremely calm and kind. She is easy to talk to and always is looking to help.
“If you didn’t know it, you wouldn’t know it,” he says of her battle with kidney disease. “She never makes anything about herself.”
As she grew up, Scozzari had a relatively normal life. For the first few years, she ate only chemical-free food. She never tasted a chocolate until she was four. She ate green beans as a snack. Things began to unravel in her mid to late teens.
“When I hit puberty hormone changes triggered kidney changes and my function started to drop,” she says. “Over the last eight years I’d say that’s when we started to plan for a transplant. It became very real at that point.”
Five years ago she booked an appointment with Adam Lloyd, a health and nutrition specialist and strength and conditioning coach who runs a gym in Hamilton.
In their initial consultation she asked him to help her optimize her nutrition intake to help sustain her kidneys. Rather quickly, he also took on the role as a life-skills coach.
“I tried to help her calibrate her compass,” Lloyd says. In the past, he has helped develop some of the NHL’s brightest young stars, including Mitch Marner, Max Domi, Dylan Strome and Clayton Keller. “She was not very confident when we began to work together. Fast forward and she has grown exponentially.”
Lloyd remembers the day four years ago where Saverina shared with him that her kidney function had gone into a sudden decline. Her kidneys, which clean the blood of toxins, were now functioning at less than 10 per cent.
“It was a shocker in a big way,” he says. “Both of us started to cry as we talked about it. We began to do a lot more internal work. A kidney transplant was coming whether she wanted it or not.
“Initially she looked at it as a huge obstacle rather than an opportunity. She was highly negative. Now she highlights the positives. It has been incredible for a young woman who has been through so much.”
In each of the past three years, Scozzari was on the verge of receiving a transplant.
Initially her mother was the donor match but she was ruled out after she experienced some health issues. Another time doctors decided to wait, because the longer a patient goes without a transplant, the better. Then last January, one was postponed at the last minute.
“It has been brutal, especially the last time when it was a week before,” Scozzari says. “It’s like getting ready to jump off a cliff and then at the last second it’s like ‘Nope, we’re not doing it.’
“Then you kind of get a little delusional and tell yourself maybe it will never happen and that you will be okay without it – and then you have to go through it all over again and bring yourself into that acceptance mode.”
She grew up in Hamilton and is an only child. She never went to university but that was not an impediment to her professional career.
At 14, she began to work part-time for Cable 14 in Hamilton as an entertainment and lifestyle host and at 16 was given her own show. From there, she worked as a guest correspondent for TMZ Live and wrote for the Huffington Post.
“I swore I would never work in sports,” Scozzari says. “I wanted to grow up and cover the Oscars’ red carpet and marry Brad Pitt. That was the goal.”
At 20 she did an interview with Zac Rinaldo, then an NHL centre, and it got noticed in the hockey world. Through that, she began to develop connections.
“The entertainment industry was changing at that time,” she says. “I didn’t see a future for myself in it and then the sports opportunities started to open up.”
A mighty mite at 5 foot 2, she works out at home several times a day, does yoga, dance and kick boxes.
Because her immune system is depleted, she has had to be extra careful since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
On Nov. 28, 2020, her beloved grandfather, Vito Pisano, died from dementia at 90. It broke her heart when she could not attend his funeral visitation.
“It was only going to be a small group but I wasn’t able to do that or say goodbye to him at the hospital like everybody else,” Scozzari says.
Before COVID, she would visit him in a nursing home on her way home from work. She would bring him cannolis and a large cappuccino from Starbucks, they would watch That ′70s Show together.
“We did FaceTime calls during COVID but he wasn’t really able to understand,” Saverina says. “It was really hard.”
In October, she celebrated her 25th birthday with a party at a banquet hall in Hamilton. She danced to her two favourite songs – Show Me by the Cover Girls and Spring Love by Stevie B.
At Christmas, she will celebrate at home with her family. She was in quarantine on Dec. 25 for the past three years.
“My mom was a little hesitant to get together because it is so close to my surgery and thought maybe we should not be around anybody, but I think I am at more risk being at the hospital,” Scozzari says.
She says she has been fortunate thus far. She has not needed dialysis which she says, while life-saving, lessens one’s quality of life.
She feels more ready than previously for a transplant.
“I am in a better place about it now than I was,” Scozzari says. “I feel like I have accepted it and am getting ready to embrace a new chapter in my life.
“I am setting goals for afterwards so I have something to help me push through those tougher periods and challenges. I am trying to make a game plan to attack them when they come up. It is going to be a big adjustment.”
If all goes well she will undergo surgery in less than two weeks. Having a living donor could extend the life of one kidney to 15 to 20 years.
She has done fundraising work for the Kidney Foundation of Canada and promises to continue. Two years ago, she teamed up with David Ayres, the Zamboni-driving goalkeeper who beat the Maple Leafs, to help raise $100,000. Ayres had a kidney transplant more than a decade ago.
“I am absolutely proud of her,” Amelia says. “I can shout it from the rooftops. From the time she was small, I always said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like her.’”
Scozzari is grateful to get a new kidney. Hopefully, the wait is finally over. She looks forward to expanding her list of hockey clients, marrying Brad Pitt and having a family.
“Knock me out and cut me open,” she says. “I am in for that.”