Cross Early put on his green ankle bands, hopped up and down a few times, and brushed his hair to the side before shaking hands with his opening-round opponent at USA Wrestling Folkstyle Nationals on April 2, 2021. His mother, Angie, watched nervously from her home in Clanton, Alabama. 

This could be said about any mother watching her child wrestle. Parents — especially moms — can get edgy and excitable when their offspring compete. Wrestling is personal — and there is nothing quite like the moment when a wrestler walks alone to the center of the mat. 

The event was held at the UNI-Dome on the campus of the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. Perhaps no wrestler in the history of this venue has overcome more.

And that’s saying something.

This is the place where Dan Gable set the all-time point record at the 1997 NCAA Championships during his final season as Iowa’s head coach. This is where Junior Nationals and the National Duals used to be held. This is where major wrestling and sporting events continue to be held. 

Earley’s remarkable achievements went largely unnoticed by those in attendance. The 16-year-old won his first match by fall and finished with a 2-2 record in the 120-pound Junior division. He was knocked out of the tournament and did not place. 

On the surface, this appears to be a mediocre and somewhat insignificant accomplishment. Plenty of wrestlers finished the tournament with better records and lots more hardware. 

The difference between those wrestlers and Cross Earley is that Earley should not be alive right now. His singular act of walking to the center of a wrestling mat deserves more than a wooden trophy in the shape of a stop sign. 

STAYING RESILIENT THROUGH UNTHINKABLE ADVERSITY

Wrestlers are taught to be resilient, but no one could adequately prepare for the adversity that Earley would face on June 17, 2019. A caravan of wrestlers from Team Alabama prepared to depart for the Disney Duals at 7 a.m. Angie Earley dropped off her son at 6:30 for the eight-hour drive to Orlando. 

“The head coach there was like my son — he was like my grown son,” Angie said. “We had just dropped Cross off and we picked up the head coach’s baby. She was about three years old at the time. The last thing he said to me was, ‘You take care of my baby and I’ll take care of yours.’”

Two hours later, Angie received a call from the father of another wrestler about an accident. One of the vans had wrecked but he was unsure of the severity. He thought Cross may have hurt his arm but he didn’t know the details. 

“That’s ok,” Angie thought to herself. “It’s just a broken bone. They can fix a broken bone.” 

The family hopped into their vehicle to meet their son at a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama. Then Angie’s phone started to explode with text messages from several of the kids who were at the scene of the accident. Cross was being airlifted to a nearby hospital. 

“That’s when I knew it was more than a broken arm,” Angie said. 

Angie saw her son for the first time in the emergency room. He was in an induced coma and was on a ventilator so the family could not communicate with him. 

The driver of the van had lost control and overcorrected before the vehicle went end over end. The windows were shattered and Cross was cut from his right flank all the way up to the middle of his back. 

“I wasn’t expecting anything like that,” Cross said. “I’m not sure what happened because I don’t really want to. I know we ran off the road three times and he overcorrected three times. We hit the median, started to flip, and I was ejected. I remember everything. I was awake but they didn’t want me to move.”

MORE THAN BROKEN BONES

Cross sustained more than broken bones. His right arm was nearly severed, his lungs were exposed, his neck was broken, and his intestines and spleen were hanging out. He was losing so much blood that he needed to get to the closest hospital — fast. 

“There was a retired military guy who came upon the accident right after it happened and put a tourniquet on his arm,” Angie said. “I truly believe that’s what saved him.”

A path to recovery would be difficult and demanding. A path to wrestling again appeared to be impossible. 

In reality, how could it be possible to return to the mat? The family went to four different neurosurgeons and they all said he would never wrestle again. It took 40 weeks for one of his wounds to heal since Cross refused skin grafts. 

Cross was entering his freshman year of high school at that point so a round-the-clock support system was put in place. Angie quit her job so she could take care of her son. Tilly, the youngest of two sisters, transferred during her senior year to take care of her brother at school. 

“It was tough not knowing if I’d be able to get back on the mat or not,” Cross said. “I couldn’t move much for a couple of months and then I had to start physical therapy a few months later and that was rough. I was in the hospital for three weeks but I was laying in a bed all day, every day for about two months. Just rough on my whole family.”

The only reason Cross was at the public high school was that it offered wrestling. The private school where her sisters attended did not. 

“He always maintained that his #1 goal was to get back on the mat again,” Angie said. "He couldn’t imagine a life not wrestling.

“We come from a wrestling family, which is extremely unusual in Alabama. He’s a third-generation wrestler. He had been doing it since he was four. We dedicated our lives to wrestling. Our girls had to kind of do their sports around wrestling. It’s something that our entire family loves.”

Cross loves wrestling so much that he refused to let the advice of multiple neurosurgeons get in the way of getting back on the mat. He found a doctor who would perform neck surgery on the stipulation that he had to wait an entire year before he tried his hand at wrestling again.

SWITCHING SIDES

The family also made the decision to switch from Warrior Wrestling Club to crosstown rival Ironclad Wrestling Club led by Jake Elkins. Around Birmingham, that would be like an Iowa wrestler transferring to Penn State — or vice versa. 

“I was honored that he eventually came to us and said, ‘I don’t know if I can wrestle again but if I can I think you’re the guy who can help me.’ It was kind of a big deal because he was kind of crossing lines. We are the rival club. He came over and worked with us. 

“We worked out privately for a long time. He couldn’t do one pull-up. He couldn’t wrestle for 90 seconds without getting completely gassed. His lungs collapsed. He had all these issues. It was his first time doing anything like that.”

Slowly and steadily, Cross worked his way back into wrestling condition. He participated in around 20 matches during the scholastic season but his trip to Iowa was his first national tournament since the accident — and his first long road trip.

“Even if I’m not driving — driving or just riding — I’ll get pretty nervous and start sweating,” Cross said. “If it’s not the whole time then it’s 90 percent.”

Getting in a vehicle for a cross-country trip to wrestle was step one. Now, the family is wrestling with around a million dollars in medical bills from the accident — and that does not include the lost wages from Angie leaving her job. 

Wrestling is what the Earley family lives for, and they will stop at nothing to see this all the way through. Cross has every intention of wrestling in college even though his physical limitations hinder progress at times. 

“It’s been very trying to watch your kid suffer so much and then to see what it does to your entire family,” Angie said. “He’s doing really well considering he shouldn’t be alive right now. It’s tough to watch but it also makes me happy, too. We get to see him be able to do something that he loves that we didn’t think he would ever do again.”

Kyle Klingman can be reached at kyle.klingman@flosports.tv