Richland High senior Marisa Fazzari won't make it to her senior prom or the Bomber homecoming game.
She won't be doing any of the stuff high school seniors usually do -- except maybe graduating with her class next spring.
That's because the 17-year-old ballerina already has a full-time job with the Grand Rapids Ballet Company.
"I actually cried buckets of tears over this," Marisa said in an email this week from her new home in Michigan. "A person waits their whole life for their senior year, and I love school, and spending time with friends and attending school dances.
"In the end, I realized that I had been working hard to be both a senior and a dancer and there was no way I could do both."
The offer to join the ballet company came from Patricia Barker, a former prima ballerina with the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, who recently took as artistic director for the Michigan ballet company.
Marisa had the blessing of her parents, Carolyn and Richard Fazzari, as well as her ballet teacher Debra Pearse Rogo, to seize the opportunity of a dance career even before she graduates high school.
"This certainly was not an easy decision for Marisa to make, and it was equally difficult for her father and I to see her go," said her mother. "But it was the right move for her and I feel confident she will be OK. If anything, Marisa made this transition easy for her father and I because she's always been responsible, a truly joyful child to raise."
Stepping out into her adult life for the first time has Marisa bubbling with excitement.
"Oh my gosh, the word excited may not truly cover how I am feeling," Marisa e-mailed. "I am honored and overjoyed to have been hired to dance in a professional ballet company."
Despite a hectic schedule of long rehearsals six days a week, she also will be studying 25 hours a week taking online classes to meet the 3.5 credits she needs to graduate. She still hopes to walk with her Richland High class in June.
"Sleep is going to be a luxury for a while," she said.
Carolyn Fazzari accompanied her daughter to Grand Rapids last week to settle her into an apartment within walking distance of the ballet studio.
When Marisa was just 3 she began begging her mother to take ballet lessons after seeing her older brother taking tap dancing. Her mother relented when she was 5 and enrolled her in classes with Rogo at the Tri-Cities Academy of Ballet in Richland.
Rogo said there are few young people with Marisa's maturity, discipline, determination and passion who can get hired while still in high school.
"I am definitely not surprised that Marisa reached her goal of becoming a professional dancer," Rogo said. "She has worked for this for a very long time. Even at a young age she was unusually focused and driven."
Even a foot injury when she was 12 didn't deter Marisa.
"I was having terrible pain in my Achilles tendon when I was dancing on pointe," she wrote. "Initially, I was misdiagnosed as having acute Achilles tendonitis and was told that I could not dance. Not only was I ripped away from ballet, the thing I loved most in the world, but I had to wear walking casts full-time for more than a year."
But the pain continued pushing her tolerance to the brink.
"Those were very dark times and I began to think I might never be able to dance again," she said.
A re-examination of her feet discovered an extra bone in the back of both ankles, a rare congenital condition called "os trigonum syndrome," or dancer's heal.
Marisa had surgery to remove the extra bones and embarked on a long recovery. "It was the hardest two years of my life and I learned many lessons about hope and patience and believing in myself during that time," she said.
"Sometimes seeing her in the back of the studio sitting on the floor stretching while I was teaching her peers almost brought me to tears," Rogo said.
"It was amazing that one so young could keep hold of a dream for so long through such difficult times. Looking back, I think going through that difficult time gave her the perseverance to get to where she is now. I am so very proud of her."
Marisa's first performance with the Grand Rapids company will be in November.