When Brady Byrd was young, he would wake up early, pack his wrestling gear in his parent’s vehicle and make the long journey to whatever tournament they could find. Often, hours later, he would return with a couple of losses to show for his effort.
“Brady started wrestling in fifth grade,” his father, Sean said. “Every tournament around us was at least an hour drive. Normally he would go 0-2. But he kept doing it and kept doing it. Sometimes he would even move up weight classes just to get matches.”
While the losses piled up, so did Byrd’s determination. If wrestling was easy, he might not have ever fallen in love with the sport. The losses helped build him into one of the best wrestlers in Washington High School history.
“That prepared me,” Brady said. “Not a lot of kids at this level have been on the losing side like I have. It took me a long time before I started to see success. For the longest time my worst sport was wrestling. Being on that losing side taught me to never shy away from anything. I was not going to quit just because I wasn’t good at it. That’s never a valid reason to quit. You have to get better. That’s the only option.”
Now, Byrd is the first Fargo double All-American to ever come out of the prestigious Maurer Caughlin Wrestling Club. Byrd finished third in freestyle this year and seventh in Greco-Roman. He is currently ranked No. 5 in the state at 106 pounds and has his sights set on taking the top of the platform at the state finals. He’s come a long way – but it was never easy.
“The biggest thing with Brady, is that a lot of guys see him now, succeeding and being a good wrestler,” Washington coach Aaron Cissell said. “But nobody looks deep enough to see all the struggles and tournaments where he would lose. He stuck with it. It’s all paying off now. He has overcome all of that and fought to be successful.”
Brady started wrestling 106 pounds as a freshman. At the time he weighed just 91 pounds. He’s always been a smaller guy. This, his senior season, is the first time he’s had to cut any weight at all. And even now, the cut is minimal.
Sean, his dad, was a state placer in high school.
“I placed seventh my senior year at 112 pounds,” Sean said. “Our styles are similar except that I was all heart and toughness and didn’t have technique. Brady is heart, toughness and has excellent technique.
“I was a Region guy who was coached by Hall of famer Walt Prochno Kankakee Valley. Brady wrestles the region style in southern Indiana - tough and gritty.”
Brady agrees that toughness and grit are keys to his success.
“The grit is what makes me successful,” Brady said. I’ve always had it. A lot of kids don’t like to wrestle me. I stay in their face and stay physical.”
Injuries have plagued Brady in his young career. He has suffered an ankle and a knee injury but has bounced back from both.
“Brady is the most determined and hardest working guy I’ve ever seen,” Cissell said. “He is tough in all areas.”
Brady owns Washington’s winning percentage record, but he wants to set the school’s win record and pin record this season. Both are well within his grasp. He also wants to become the third wrestler from his school to qualify for the state finals (Mark Kelsey did it in 1984 and Aaron Brower in 2003). He also wants to become the first Washington wrestler to place at state.
Brady also does whatever is necessary to help his team. Coaches have learned to rely on him with helping teach moves in a way the other wrestlers can understand.
“People really respect Brady,” Sean said. “So, when we are teaching moves, it’s better to have a Brady show them because he can speak their language and they really feed off of him.”
Brady would like to wrestle in college and even the Olympics one day. He has excellent grades and was named to the Academic All-State Team. Outside of wrestling Brady enjoys competitive bass fishing, hunting and playing pickle ball.
“Brady is the most determined kid you’ll ever meet,” Sean said. “He works hard at everything, and the work is finally starting to pay dividends.”
Brady has started this young season off with 15 consecutive wins. He hopes for much more as the year goes on. He loves the sport and enjoys working at it.
“Wrestling is one-on-one,” Brady said. “People call me crazy because I train so much. I don’t like relying on other people to win. I like relying on myself. What I put in is what I get out.”
When Brownsburg opens its doors to kick off the 2023-24 wrestling season on Nov. 29 vs. Westfield, it will be the first time in 291 days that Parker Reynolds steps onto the mat in competition. Nine months and 18 days full of doctor’s visits, blood tests, surgeries, physical therapy and pushing himself to the limit, all for a young athlete to return to wrestling stronger than he left it.
Parker, the 138-pound freshman starter in last year’s Bulldog lineup, had his first high school campaign riddled with a then-mysterious condition causing numbness in his hands. A season which had incredible high points – on Dec. 10 at the Walsh Jesuit Ironman, he defeated the eventual 138-pound state champion from Ohio – was challenged by a mix of physical and mental hurdles.
“When I wrestled, I would lose all feeling. It was almost like there were knives in my forearms, it hurt really, really bad,” Parker said. “It started to almost become a mental thing because before a lot of matches, I wouldn’t know if it was going to come up or not and it almost freaked me out before every match. I was worried that my hands were going to go numb, and it really started messing with me when I wrestled.”
Following a semi-state loss to end his freshman season, Parker immediately began seeing a series of doctors to diagnose his condition. They tested his heart, musculoskeletal system and blood for autoimmune diseases before being referred to a group of specialists on thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) – one being Dr. George G. Sheng, a vascular surgeon with Ascension Medical Group.
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, TOS – a condition often found in pitchers due to their repetitive throwing motion – refers to a series of syndromes where compression of nerves, arteries and veins in the lower neck and upper chest causes pain or numbness in the surrounding areas.
Parker, after undergoing another series of tests with Dr. Sheng, was diagnosed with both neurogenic and venous TOS, two of the three syndromes related to TOS causing his hands to turn purple, numbness and the sensation of feeling knives in his forearms.
The constant movement of the shoulder forward – similar to a pitcher’s throwing motion – at a young age can affect the placement of ribs before they’re entirely developed, leading to a partial blockage of different nerves and veins making up the spinal system. Parker became the first wrestler Dr. Sheng had seen with TOS, and in turn became the first to undergo a procedure to remove the first rib on his right side in an effort to alleviate his symptoms. The recovery timeline for this surgery to treat TOS is one year.
“Nobody thought he was going to be able to wrestle this year – not even the surgeon, not even us,” Josh Reynolds, Parker’s dad, said. “He was going to have to put the work in, he was going to have to go to physical therapy and see how his body [healed].”
Parker has TOS on both sides of his body, but an early expectation of having two rib-removal surgeries faded as the April 3 surgery on his right side relieved most symptoms on both. However, the doubt of a possible second surgery and how his body would rebound expanded the unknown from one year to potentially never wrestling again.
“This is the longest I’ve ever gone without having a match, I felt like so much was getting taken away from me. There was a lot of doubt [if I would ever wrestle again],” Parker said.
The beginning stages of Parker’s recovery can be summed up in two words: Boring and grueling. Unable to do anything where he might feel pressure in his left side, the rising sophomore found himself unable to do all of his favorite things – wrestling, as well as enjoy fishing and a number of water activities at his family’s vacation home in Florida.
After months of being in a dark place mentally, from not knowing what was going on with his body to possibly being unable to wrestle for at least a year, Parker began seeing a mental coach.
“[Parker’s mental coach] has probably been one of the biggest influences in all of this,” Josh said. “He was a calming voice to Parker and saying ‘Listen, you’ve got to listen to your body. If you’re not right, you can’t come back prematurely.’”
Taking the next step in his rehab process by beginning light, lower body-focused workouts helped, too, and Parker’s parents saw a noticeable change mentally.
And then, a lump on his neck appeared and severe nosebleeds began, sparking a series of blood tests with the possibility of lymphoma or leukemia. The average size of a lymph node is under 1.5 centimeters in diameter, and Parker’s grew to near 3 centimeters.
“He’d make comments like, “I don’t know what I can do if I can’t wrestle. That’s all I’ve ever done, I’ve been wrestling since I was four.’” Josh said. “As a family, it was tough especially for my wife and I because we’re just saying we want [Parker] healthy and in his eyes, ‘Well if I’m healthy I can wrestle.’”
Parker had another surgery in July to remove the entire growth from his neck. The tests for leukemia came back negative, and instead he was diagnosed with Epstein Barr virus – another form of mononucleosis – likely caused by the hit his immune system took with the removal of his rib.
He was cleared to return to practice in August, with stipulations from his surgeon: He couldn’t be taken down and was only allowed to be in situations which he could control. But he could build his entire daily routine around wrestling and gaining strength for the season.
“Coach [Chad] Red said, “You tell me when and where and I’m with you every step of the way,’” Josh recalled. “That’s when we saw this mental transition. [Parker] was working with the mental coach, doing one-on-ones with Coach Red, practicing twice a day [plus lifting weights] and he was changing his mindset.”
Over the summer, Parker lost close to 10 pounds. After being cleared by his physicians, he began working out and practicing three times a day, before school and after school, to get himself back in wrestling shape for Brownsburg’s impending Oct. 30 practice.
“After a couple months, you can see he’s getting smoother and feeling better,” Brownsburg head wrestling coach Darrick Snyder said. “Now, we’re working through with him that he’s not going to be the same dude at our opening meet that he will be at the end of the year. He’s going to take some leaps this season.”
Now, Parker’s coming back with a vengeance – finally stepping onto the mat with more answers than questions. Along with a renewed sense of confidence in his health and wrestling ability, he’s entering this season with three things he didn’t have last year:
A tattoo on his lower ribs of a quote by Moliére, a French playwright, reading, “The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.”
A list of all the wrestlers he beat last season who placed at the state championships in Indiana or surrounding states.
And a necklace with his first rib, removed when this all started, to wear around his neck before each of his matches during his improbable comeback campaign.
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