ORDWAY — The nurses at Children’s Hospital Colorado wanted to see if Aidan Halloran could sit up in bed.

The Crowley County teen was determined to do more than that. He wanted to re-learn to walk, right then and there.

“Let’s do it now. Let’s go,” Aidan told the nurses as he rose from the same bed he’d just spent weeks laying in while on life support.

He stood up, and took one step. There were still many more hurdles to come. But after being put into a coma and nearly dying multiple times, Aidan had already cleared the most important one: Regaining the resolve to put himself back together.

“He’s been like that ever since,” Aidan’s mom, Jessica Halloran, said. “He wouldn’t ever stop trying to get his life back, because he lost a year and a half. He spent so much time just trying to survive and make it through each day.”

Now Aidan, a senior 157-pounder set to compete in this weekend’s state wrestling tournament at Ball Arena, is on the other side of a trying three years that tested him physically and emotionally.

He lost his father to a car crash as a sophomore. Tore his knee in the state quarterfinals a few months later. Then that summer, another big blow: the start of a long battle with leukemia that pushed him to the brink.

Through it all, he never stopped thinking about getting back on the mat.

“It all really put into perspective the value of every day,” Aidan said. “It gave me more perspective about not just my family members’ mortality, but my own. And about how much life meant to me and that every day is a blessing and a gift, and that I need to make the most of it.

“Wrestling gave me hope, and it gave me a tangible objective to reach for. It was something to make me never give up.”

Losing his father

A former soccer player and ballet dancer, Aidan didn’t start wrestling until seventh grade, after his family moved from Pennsylvania.

Right away, he showed promise in football and on the mat, where he qualified for state as a freshman at Crowley County High.

But his life changed Dec. 15, 2021, when his father, Randal, was killed in a single-vehicle crash on Highway 71. Randal’s sudden death hit the Halloran family — Jessica, Aidan and his siblings Curran, now 19, Keegan, 16, and Brielle, 13 — hard.

Aidan took a month off from wrestling. His dad’s passing affected him in ways he couldn’t communicate at the time, as Aidan’s friend Tel Buford explained.

“He withdrew, and he wouldn’t talk to many people,” Buford said. “… Even I didn’t see him a lot during that time. But he knew his dad would want him to be on the mat. That drove him back out there.”

By the time Aidan made his way back to state, he was cruising, having just won the regional title at 145 pounds with a 22-7 record. One particular memory of his father — when Randal came to Aidan’s wrestling tournament days before his death — motivated him.

“If he didn’t get back to wrestling, he would’ve been swallowed in his grief,” said Allie Buford, a Crowley County wrestling mom and friend of the family. “So his mentality was, ‘Alright, let’s wrestle.’ What other choice did he have? It was keep going, or give up.”

But in his quarterfinal match at Ball Arena, Aidan tore the meniscus in his right knee, forcing him to forfeit the semifinal match and consolation round. He still ended up on the podium, in sixth place.

The injury was a gut punch to Aidan. But less than a week after having his knee surgically repaired, he was back in the weight room wearing a brace. He and Tel Buford frequented the garage gym of Tel’s grandpa, Jerry Bob Buford, a dusty set-up in a detached garage that serves as an unofficial gym for all types in Ordway, from high schoolers to prison guards to sheriff’s deputies.

Aidan and Tel Buford were in there six days a week, grinding, bulking up and looking forward to football season. Until one fateful weekend that summer, when Aidan’s life ground to a halt.

Leukemia’s takedown

It started with Aidan getting COVID. After several weeks, he wasn’t bouncing back. He initially lost 20 pounds. He developed insomnia, night sweats. And eventually, a full-body rash.

By the time he was admitted to Children’s Hospital in Aurora on July 24, 2022, he was in bad shape. The next day he began vomiting blood, and doctors finally diagnosed him: He had leukemia. Bone marrow tests revealed it was ALL — acute lymphocytic leukemia.

That day, Aidan became septic. He underwent emergency exploratory surgery, and doctors discovered a blood clot that had killed off part of his colon. By that evening, he was placed on life support and into a medically induced coma.

“For a while there it was, ‘Is he going to make it through the night? Is he going to make it through the next surgery?’” Allie Buford recalled. “It was really touch-and-go there.”

After about three weeks, Aidan improved, and doctors took him off life support. Jessica, a teacher at Crowley County, was by his side throughout. But he still had a long road ahead, and months more at the hospital. First, he had to learn how to walk and talk again. Then there was chemotherapy, treatment that continues to this day.

“We’ve had multiple doctors tell us, ‘It’s a miracle he’s alive,’” Jessica Halloran said. “Because they remember those toughest moments, and didn’t think he was going to survive.”

Heartbreak on long road back

By the time Aidan appeared at a Crowley County football game in the fall of his junior year, the crowd decked out in orange to honor his fight with ALL, he was too emaciated and weak to run out onto the field.

Playing football and wrestling were out of the question, but he went out for baseball that spring, even though he had never played before. He was hungry to participate in Charger athletics — even with a colostomy bag hanging from his stomach.

“Aidan’s struggles last year were an amazing inspiration to our team,” said Jeb Brown, the Crowley County baseball coach and pastor at the Hallorans’ church in Ordway, River of Life. “I would have to stop drills and be like, ‘Aidan, you’re not doing this anymore.’ Because he had no speed or stamina or strength, but he would just run and keep working while hanging onto that bag.”

Fast forward to the end of last summer, and a return to normalcy was in sight.

As a linebacker and receiver in football, he was a practice player who was allowed to stand in during drills. But with his colostomy bag, he still couldn’t engage in the physicality the game demanded. He hoped that would change with an October surgery to remove the bag, but there were complications, and it remained in place.

Then, amid his comeback, tragedy struck the town.

Brown’s son, Blevyns Brown, died in a single-car crash the morning of Oct. 15. The night before, Blevyns — a three-sport star at the school who quarterbacked the football team — threw three touchdowns in the Chargers’ homecoming win. After attending church service Sunday morning, he went to check on his family’s cattle. On the drive back into Ordway he fell asleep at the wheel, veered off the road and rolled his pick-up.

Blevyns’ death devastated the community. Around 2,000 people showed up to his funeral, held at the Crowley County gym, including Aidan, who just had surgery to remove a stomach abscess.

Jeb Brown called the turnout, and Aidan’s presence, “one of the most impactful gifts of grace that God has used to bring healing to us.”

“Since Blevyn’s death, Aidan has leaned in closer to our family, and that’s been special for us,” Brown explained. “I see it in his eyes — he was near death, and the Lord brought him through that. He knows we have experienced death, and he’s caring for us from his experience.”

Crowley County principal Brandon Roe said the example Aidan set in the wake of Blevyns’ death gave the grieving school “a steady hand” to help them through their collective agony.

“You could look at Aidan and see how he was keeping it together, how he was poised, he was steadfast. That says a lot about who he is,” Roe said. “He didn’t get these big emotional swings, and that was good for our student body to see. … He was going through it way worse with his own personal struggles, and then add that to the grief we all felt after we lost Bleyvns.

“Personally, when I was feeling down about Blevyns, I could look at Aidan and his strength and say, ‘If this 17-year-old kid can do this, I can do it, too.’”

The strength of rural Ordway

Heartbreak is nothing new for the citizens of Ordway, a small town of about 1,150 in southeastern Colorado.

In the years since the pandemic, the high school lost a teacher to suicide. A man fell down a well on his farm and died. Another young man died in an accident while cleaning his gun.

“It’s been a really trying time for our community,” Roe said.

But by leaning on one another, the community kept picking itself up.

So when all of Crowley County rallied around the Hallorans, then did the same for the Browns, that sort of support wasn’t unusual.

“It is the only way we made it through this,” Jessica Halloran said.

To support both families, the community put on various fundraising efforts. There was a pass-the-hat at Crowley County Days over the summer to raise money for Jessica’s trips to Denver to stay with Aidan. The school district worked with Jessica to keep her employed, allowing her to help teach remotely while Aidan was hospitalized. The No. 1, Blevyns’ number in all three sports, became a staple on shirts and was written on basketball and wrestling shoes.

That support extended beyond county lines, too.

The Chargers’ rival football teams honored Blevyns during their games, while the Hallorans’ old babysitter Taylor Boyett sold her house in Missouri and moved to Aurora to be close to the family during Aidan’s treatment.

“I just had this feeling that I was needed,” explained Boyett. “Call it God, call it intuition, I just knew we needed to be here closer to them. (My husband and I) rented a way bigger house than we needed to on purpose, because the other Halloran kids would come over. We were desperate to just offer whatever support they needed. And I know people in (Ordway) felt the same way.”

Ordway is a town centered around school, church and sports. Located within the third-poorest county in Colorado, Ordway’s main occupations are the corrections industry (there is a state prison and private prison nearby) and agriculture. There is one main street in the town, dotted by a grocery store, coffee shop and a few businesses.

When hard times hit, everybody feels it. And everybody chips in to ease that pain.

“This is all a testament to what rural Colorado is,” Roe said. “Yeah, it’s not perfect and we don’t have all the fancy, shiny things like the Front Range does. But when it comes to supporting each other, and when it comes to tragedies, and even successes, people are there for each other, people cheer for each other.

“The amount of support our community had in response to the passing of Blevyns has been incredible. And the same thing for Aidan — watching people at regionals (last) weekend cheer for him who have never met him, but just know the struggles that he’s gone through. We have all your small-town issues, but when it comes down to it, everybody is there for everybody.”

Halloran’s return to the mat

The marks on Aidan’s body serve as reminders of the rigors of his cancer treatment.

A pair of scars on his stomach are all that remain from his original operation and colostomy bag, which was removed after five abdominal surgeries in October and November. Another scar on his chest is from his chemotherapy port. Then there’s the array of stretch marks on his back from when his body puffed up and deflated during his time on life support.

After practicing for several months with his colostomy bag taped up, Aidan was finally cleared to wrestle. In his first tournament back at the Lamar Invitational on Jan. 6, he took third place and received a standing ovation.

“That was pretty overwhelming,” Aidan said. “I knew my return was going to happen eventually. I was just so blessed that the day finally came to fruition. I knew I was going to wrestle, but to actually get back out there, I was just so happy.”

Still, upon his return to competition, it became clear Aidan had a significant stamina issue to overcome. In his first few tournaments, he quickly became gassed due to the effects of his chemotherapy treatments. By the third period, he had nothing left in the tank.

That called for a game-plan adjustment, to become a wrestler more dependent on mind than muscle, Crowley County assistant coach John Gray said, even as one important variable hadn’t changed.

“Aidan’s still the kid with the most heart, but we’ve adapted his strategy for his shape a little bit,” Gray said. “He’s wrestling kind of like a fat guy, like a 2A or 3A heavyweight. It’s all about staying in good position, score your points when the opportunity comes, wait for the other guy to make mistakes. Which is hard for Aidan to do, but he’s been buttery smooth (with technique) all year, and that’s the hope at state: stay buttery smooth, get his shots when he can, stay in good position, be aware of (match circumstances).”

The ultimate payoff

When Aidan enters Ball Arena on Thursday for the start of the state tournament, he’ll be joined by his brother, sophomore 150-pounder Keegan Halloran. Those two, along with freshman 106-pounder Derreck Buford, are Crowley County’s three qualifiers from their small, tight-knit six-man team that practices in a converted lunchroom at the town’s old middle school.

Aidan took runner-up at regionals to qualify. Keegan was third. Their appearance at Ball Arena will be a sweet reward for everything they’ve been through over the past few years, from losing their dad to Aidan’s battle in the hospital, where Keegan often helped his ailing brother walk around the floor of the ICU.

“It’s going to be surreal to walk in (to Ball Arena) and know I finally made it after all my surgeries, after everything I’ve been through and all the small steps I’ve taken to get there — the lifts at Jerry Bob’s Gym when I felt sick, the (countless) doctors visits,” Aidan said. “I’m ready for this opportunity to finally be able to wrestle on the big stage again at state. I’m prepared. But when I get there, there will probably be (no words).”

A solid contingent of red-and-white-clad fans will be in the stands to offer Aidan (20-5 this year) support.

And back home in Ordway, every TV in the school will livestream the tournament as Aidan’s peers and teachers gather to witness another step in his miraculous comeback.

No matter what happens inside Ball Arena, the Crowley County faithful are thankful to see him back out on the mat, and for him to have the health to experience his 18th birthday this week.

“Sometimes we can get our priorities so jacked up heading into regionals and state,” Allie Buford said. “What’s our priority? Seeing my son on top of the podium, or making sure these kids are loved no matter what? That’s a good takeaway from everything Aidan’s been through: Keep our priorities straight. God first, family second, wrestling after that. Aidan’s shown us that.”

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