The fact that Killian Cardinale became a 125-pound All-American last weekend at the 2023 NCAA Wrestling Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is not that remarkable.
West Virginia University has had 35 of them in its long history, including Cardinale himself, who finished seventh at nationals in 2021 after transferring from Old Dominion.
The Mountaineers have had multiple All-Americans and national champions, too. No, what makes Cardinale's accomplishment so remarkable is how he did it – basically on one leg!
Just four weeks after having surgery to repair his meniscus, and only a couple of months after missing the early portion of the season because of painful stress reactions in his toes, Cardinale soldiered on to become West Virginia's eighth multiple All-American, joining the likes of Zeke Moisey, Brandon Rader, Vertus Jones, Whitey Chlebove, Mike Mason, Mark Banks and, yes, the incomparable Greg Jones.
Cardinale's journey to the podium is a painful reminder that wrestling can be a grueling sport, physically and emotionally.
Who didn't see the clip posted on social media recently of Spencer Lee's mother, Cathy, smashing her glasses to pieces and throwing them to the ground in disgust when her son lost in the 125-pound semifinals, denying him a fourth national championship?
Cardinale did. That's his weight class. The guy who knocked Cardinale out of the championship round in the quarterfinals, Purdue's Matt Ramos, is also the guy who upset Lee.
"Initially, I felt bad because ESPN is putting her on blast compared to the other kids' parents," Cardinale said earlier this week. "It showed just one parent of more than 600 parents that were watching that weekend. We put our whole lives into this sport, so I think most people can kind of empathize with what she did, for sure."
What it showed to the rest of us us that entire families are invested in this enterprise.
"I heard (world champion) Jordan Burroughs once say if he could give everyone who helped him a piece of his medal, it would be like a grain of sand, and I think that holds true for most of us," Cardinale explained. "My parents sacrificed a lot.
"Their hands are sweating, too (at meets)," he added.
The frequent trips to practices, the rearranging of schedules and yes, visits to the doctor are all part of it. To wrestle collegiately, you have to really love this sport, and it takes a total family commitment to be successful.
That's why arenas are always packed to the rafters whenever and wherever the NCAA Championships are held.
Listening to Cardinale describe all of his injuries reminded me of the Sports Illustrated story Myron Cope once wrote about Roberto Clemente titled "Aches and Pains and Three Batting Titles." In it, Cope painstakingly detailed all of Clemente's injuries and included a full-body diagram depicting his many ailments, from head to toe. For Cardinale, the only season he said was even remotely healthy was his redshirt sophomore year at Old Dominion when he first broke into the national rankings. Then, Old Dominion dropped its program, and he needed to find another place to wrestle.
This was during COVID, and his only recourse was to look for schools virtually, one of them being West Virginia.
"I had already met the West Virginia staff in high school when they were still at Edinboro, so that was kind of nice," he said.
It was also nice that Morgantown was only a couple of hours away from Bristow, Virginia, where his family lives.
"(West Virginia) was pretty close to home, three hours or so; I met the coaches before; big school, high-level wrestling and, academically, it made sense so I thought it would be a good fit," he said.
His first year at WVU in 2021 was a success when he placed seventh at NCAAs to earn All-America honors.
Last year, a debilitating shoulder injury reduced his season to just a couple of months at the end when he won a Big 12 championship and qualified for nationals. However, his bid to reach the podium ended in the "Blood Round" when Minnesota's Patrick McKee pinned him. Cardinale had defeated Campbell's Korbin Meink 11-2 in a major-decision victory on the opening night of the championships.
This past fall, his final collegiate campaign began with his two big toes giving him big trouble.
"It just kept persisting. I got an MRI in August, and it was diagnosed as stress reactions, almost like stress fractures, in both of my big toes," he explained. "I couldn't shoot very much, but only certain positions bothered me."
For a wrestler who is at his best on his feet, not being able to shoot is like going to target practice without a gun.
"If I went too hard in certain positions it hurt, so I just avoided certain positions," he shrugged.
Cardinale was off the mat for about a month and a half recovering, and then two days after returning, he tore his ACL drilling with a teammate.
Was his wrestling career finished, he wondered? He could have used a medical redshirt, but the recovery process would have lasted nine months to a year, meaning he would have missed part of next season.
Was it worth it to go through another year of rehab at this point in his life?
He knew other wrestlers who had competed with torn ACLs, and he wanted to see if he could do it, too. So, he returned to the mat around Christmas at the Midlands Tournament and was getting back into shape with his weight where to needed to be.
But the day before a dual match against Air Force, his other knee buckled on him during practice.
"I tried to put pressure on it, and I couldn't bend my knee," he admitted. "After two or three days of not being able to get my knee out of a locked position, I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a bucket handle meniscus tear. They went in there and scoped that out like two weeks before Big 12s."
That was 27 days before nationals. He had wrestled just 10 matches for the season and was forced to skip the conference championships, which meant he was going to have a low seeding for NCAAs (28th). Even more concerning, he wasn't sure if he was going to have full range of motion when he got back on the mat.
"When I first tore my ACL, my shoulder issues didn't seem too big when I had it," he said. "Sometimes, it's almost relative because when I tore my meniscus the ACL tear wasn't that bad. I would like to sit here and say if I was totally healthy, I would have done better, but that's hard to say. You never know how it's going to play out."
It does illustrate the importance of being healthy at the right time of the year. It's not coincidental that the healthiest wrestlers at the end of the season are usually the ones standing at the podium at NCAAs.
"Being healthy plays to your advantage, for sure, and even if you're banged up you have to kind of survive and be the last man standing," Cardinale explained.
"The competitor part in me would have liked to have done better," he added, "but it's crazy the level I was able to wreste after having surgery 27 days before the tournament."
So, what did he learn about himself throughout this whole process?
"That I'm a tough SOB," he answered. "It's easy to get going when things are right. How are you going to respond when things don't go your way? I discovered a lot about myself this year because of that."
And those are valuable lessons that he can take with him for the rest of his life, for sure!
Original source can be found here
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