Family of Teen Wrestler Fights Hard to Beat Odds

BUFFALO GROVE, IL — A wrestler from Buffalo Grove, who was not even on the radar at the state level a year ago, is now getting national attention and will head to two prestigious wrestling tournaments in the coming months. Alex Randell, a senior at Notre Dame College Prep in Niles, has been chosen to represent Team Illinois in the Junior National Duals in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in both Freestyle and Greco Roman wrestling. He is headed to Oklahoma this week as the competition gets underway on June 17.

The honor comes after a big year for the hard-working teen, who first started wrestling at age 6 and toiled away at the sport he loved for years. He now trains, on average, about 20 hours per week year round, all while maintaining Magna Cum Laude status at Notre Dame.

"He would be at school before anyone to get in a morning workout, and I think most of the time he was the only kid in the weight room, but he wanted to get as big and strong as possible before this year," Alex's mother Ilyce told Patch. "He takes a week or two off after the high school season and then four weeks off the mat in every August, mandatory per me because I want his body to have a break. Even this summer when everyone is out and about he is going to 1 or 2 wrestling practices and also the gym getting ready for all the spring and summer dual teams and tournaments."

Team USA asked Alex to represent Illinois in the 106-pound weight class after he won freestyle state and Greco state this past year, Ilyce Randell said. He will compete in the junior division in both freestyle and Greco in Tulsa. Also this summer, Alex will head to Fargo, North Dakota, to compete on the Junior National Team — again wrestling in both freestyle and Greco competitions.

While Alex has made the national team in the past, representing Illinois in the 88-pound and then 100-pound divisions, he has grown more and seems to be hitting his stride in the 106-pound division. With that has come a lot more competitions. At this time last year, Alex had wrestled in about 10 matches, but this year, he's already been to over 35 competitions, Ilyce said.

"As a mom it's just so hard to watch your kid getting beat up on the mat, and he just never gave up, even when it was really rough," she wrote in an email response to Patch. "It's finally paying off and he's had more success than ever before and I am proud of him and happy for him. This is a really difficult sport."

Alex wants to pursue a career in a medical-related field, such as sports medicine or orthopedics, he told Patch, and he hopes all of his hard work will help earn him a spot on a college wrestling team.

"Training year-round in some of the most elite high school wrestling rooms and training with world-class athletes has prepared me for the rigors of college wrestling," Alex said.

But as many parents of youth athletes know, and especially those who have reached an elite level such as Alex, the pursuit can be costly. Additional competitions comes with additional costs for travel and other expenses.

And Alex's family already has had plenty of curveballs thrown at them in life. Alex's older brother, Maxie, was diagnosed with a very rare brain disease called Canavan when he was an infant.

"When Maxie was 4 months old his doctor told me about his diagnosis and told me 'not to get attached to my baby,'" Ilyce said.

Doctors told her that Maxie would not live past age 4, according to a GoFundMe page set up to help cover costs for Alex's travel. The Randells all apparently have a fighting spirit and hard-work ethic, because Ilyce did not accept that fate for her oldest child and fought hard for research and funding for gene therapy.

Saving her son's life became her full-time job.

"I had to learn as I went and even spent years lobbying with Maxie in Washington when we needed to gain approval and federal funding," Ilyce said.

Her hard-work paid off. At 11 months old, Maxie "made history" and became the youngest person to receive gene therapy for a brain disease. He is now 22 years old and "doing pretty well." Ilyce is his full-time caretaker and Maxie loves watching his little brother compete at local tournaments.

Alex makes sure to come over and hug his big brother after his matches.

"... Maxie absolutely loves it, I think because he's seen Alex's matches on the computer and he sees his brother out there and everyone cheering, so to Maxie, Alex is a famous wrestler," Ilyce said. "He beams with pride and it's just amazing how they're so close."

Ilyce Randell founded Canavan Research Illinois, a non-profit organization to support medical research to treat, cure, and improve the quality of lives of all children battling Canavan disease, a rare fatal genetic neurological disorder. Through her efforts came gene therapy clinical trials. She also worked to fund the development of a combination of medicines to slow the progression of Canavan disease in some children.

Even with all this, children who are born with the disease and receive excellent care are only expected to live into their teens or twenties, according to information on the Canavan Research Illinois website.

While she doesn't regret the work for a second, Ilyce said the experimental medical interventions needed to save Maxie's life were not covered by insurance and have left her with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt over the past 20 years.

"I've never fundraised for those costs because I founded and run a charitable organization so I thought it would be confusing, so all my fundraising efforts have been for medical research and to help other affected families," she said.

But she has started a fund-raising effort to help cover the costs for Alex's travel this summer to hopefully bolster his wrestling career. The GoFundMe page has currently raised $845 and has a $2,500 goal.

"I am extremely proud of Alex for his dedication and discipline with his wrestling career. He has been training year round since he was six years old to become the best wrestler he can be," the proud mother wrote on the GoFundMe page. "This financial burden has been increasing as he's been improving to the point of being asked to wrestle on more traveling dual teams."

He's already traveled to Pennsylvania, Champaign and Virginia Beach since March, and he is now headed to Tulsa and Fargo. Each trip has expenses for training camps, uniforms and travel, Ilyce said.

"So I'm trying to cover the extra costs. It's amazing to get all these opportunities, and I don't want money to be an obstacle to his success," she continued.

Ilyce thinks the competitions this summer are crucial to getting Alex recognized, and hopefully, into a great college.

"Next summer Alex will be focusing more on getting ready to wrestle in college, and all this training and competition is critical to his college wrestling career and beyond," Ilyce Randell wrote. "If we can aid him in reaching some of his goals this summer it will help him secure more opportunities for wrestling in college."

• Donations can be made to the Randell family on the GoFundMe page
  

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