gotchanewsdaily.com 
When Nicholas Scarvelis, who competed in the shot put for Greece in the 2016 Rio Olympics, decided to retire in 2022, he was finally able to plan a future with Noelle Zappia.
A fan of Greek mythology might say that Zeus had a hand in the future of Nicholas Scarvelis, a Greek American Olympian shot putter. It was a future where he simultaneously stepped away from his first love of competing professionally to a new kind of love when he connected with Noelle Zappia on a dating app in October 2019.
“I remember both of us saying to the other, ‘Hey, you seem interesting, let’s meet in person,’” Ms. Zappia said. “Soon after, we met at San Diego’s Balboa Park and just sat and talked. All the things that I wanted to talk about, Nick wanted to talk about.”
Within months, they became exclusive. “There was such a sense of patience and clarity when we met,” Ms. Zappia said. But their time together was limited because Mr. Scarvelis was still competing and training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after representing Greece at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
In July 2020, during the height of Covid pandemic, Mr. Scarvelis moved from San Diego to Mesa, Ariz., to train. He and Ms. Zappia would regularly meet up a little more than halfway in Dateland, Ariz.
“This oasis of Medjool date palms in the middle of the desert made our meeting spot so endearing,” Mr. Scarvelis said. “We never spent too much time there — just enough to share a date shake and fill up on gas, but it was our tiny paradise where we could catch moments with one another before returning to our separate lives.”
In August 2021, Mr. Scarvelis moved back to San Diego, and a month later, the couple headed to Samos, Greece, an island in the eastern Aegean where his mother, Alexandra Scarvelis, currently resides several months out of the year.
