Competition in paratriathlons is just part of Hailey Danz's journey

Hailey Danz wanted to run in April 2003, but she couldn’t and that didn’t sit well.

“She threw a fit,” her father Michael Danz said in a phone conversation Wednesday.

A sixth grader at the time, Hailey was determined to make the track team at Longfellow Middle School in her hometown of Wauwatosa. That called for the aforementioned runs, but a visit to the pediatrician impeded her preparation.

The visit also led to the reveal that she had osteosarcoma, a cancerous tumor in her left leg. The disease affects nearly 1,000 people each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

Hailey's concern went from wondering whether she'd make the track team to worrying if she'd ever be able to run again on her left leg.

“It was a horrible time,” Michael said.

That time has certainly passed, though.

More than 14 years and an amputation later, Hailey has won a Paralympic silver medal and travels the world as a professional athlete competing in paratriathlons. On Sunday in Pleasant Prairie, she’ll take part in the USA Paratriathlon National Championships, in conjunction with the Pleasant Prairie Triathlon.

“Anytime I get to race locally, I’m pretty stoked,” Hailey, who now lives in Chicago, said. “This is one of my favorite races.”

At 26, Hailey never longed to compete in triathlons like Sunday's competition, which features a 750-meter swim, 20-kilometer bike and 5-kilometer run. Growing up, she gravitated toward team sports.

“She was the kid that was always the dirtiest on the soccer team and always was very aggressive,” Michael said.

Hailey fell in love with volleyball by age 11, and like most young athletes, she eyed the Olympics.

As basketball season ended and the track season approached in April 2003, Hailey noticed a lump on her leg. She asked Michael and her mom, Gigi, what they thought she should do. Thinking it was just a bruise, they suggested she take Tylenol.

Days later, the lump remained, so they scheduled a doctor’s visit. Initial tests were done, and she was then transferred to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. By the time an oncology test was scheduled, Michael worried about the news that ultimately came on April 13, 2003: Hailey had bone cancer.

“My initial reaction was shock,” Hailey said. “I don’t know if I fully understood the gravity of it all. I knew it was super serious, but I was kind of like, all right, whatever, I guess this is what I’m dealing with right now and I’ll deal with it.”

Hailey was in remission a year after chemotherapy and biweekly visits to the hospital, yet her leg also needed a number of reconstructive surgeries that weren’t certain to return her leg to normal form.

Amputation was always a possibility, but it was never fully considered until Hailey attended One Step Camp near Lake Geneva in the summers that followed her diagnosis.

The camp is a program for kids who have cancer. While watching others — some being amputees — do things her leg would not permit her to do, Hailey knew amputation was the solution.

At age 14, she had the procedure done.

“I hadn’t been that happy since before I was diagnosed, so once I saw a glimpse of what my life could look like, it became really simple,” Hailey said. “Everyone says that must’ve been so hard, but the hardest part for me was convincing everyone in my life that it was a good idea.”

That includes her parents.

Michael remembers when Danz brought it up, a moment he knew came with much thought from Hailey. Still, he wasn’t convinced it was the right move.

The family discussed the matter with doctors at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, but the close relationship fostered by everything Hailey had been through forced Michael to get a second opinion.

So, the family traveled to Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and met with a doctor, to whom Michael asked a question: “If this was your 14-year-old daughter, what would you do?”

“I’d tell her to go ahead with the amputation and have her move on,” the doctor responded.

“Once we heard that, we were sold on it,” Michael said.

Months after the amputation, Hailey got her first prosthetic leg, which required a five- or six-month acclimation period. In her later high school years, it was hard, Hailey said, because she was an athlete, but she couldn't travel and compete in tournaments that her friends did.

All the sports she played growing up weren't the same. They were just too difficult to play.

After high school, Hailey attended Northwestern and went through another low point in her life. No one there knew her story, so it was the first time she really felt different.

But then she found triathlons.

In 2011, she competed in her first — the Chicago South Shore Triathlon. In 2013, Hailey won the International Triathlon Union's Paratriathlon World Championships. In 2015, she quit her job to begin training multiple times a day — something she still does now — for the Paralympics. 

In 2016, Hailey (formerly known as Hailey Danisewicz) competed in the Rio Paralympics and won a silver medal in the paratriathlon.

“We went from wondering whether she was going to live or not to seeing her standing on the podium,” Michael said. “It was pretty surreal.”

The journey has been surreal for Hailey, too.

“I’ve had to pinch myself a lot of times being, like, is this really my life?” Hailey said.

Yes, cancer survivor and Olympic silver medalist.