The Independent – Jan. 27, 2017
NORTH KINGSTOWN — Isaiah Aponte pedals a stationary bike in the corner of the gym. His North Kingstown High School teammates spar in pairs on the wrestling mats, working on takedowns, holds and moves. They jog a few laps and Aponte keeps pedaling. As practice winds down, they play a game with mini nets and a soccer ball – a little fun after a long week of workouts. Aponte pedals.
Today, at the end of practice, the bike is at the intersection of what it takes and what he can do. Tomorrow, it might be working on the mats. The next day, running and lifting weights. Aponte will do anything.
“He’s doing everything he possibly can,” assistant coach Josh Clare said.
The goal is to wrestle. The challenge is lupus.
Aponte, a senior captain for the Skippers, was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease last year. It’s a chronic condition in which a person’s immune system attacks healthy tissue. It can affect everything from skin to joints to internal organs. Aponte first felt symptoms as a junior. Doctors initially thought it might be Lyme disease but eventually diagnosed lupus.
“I didn’t really know what it meant,” Aponte said.
He did know, right away, that he wanted to keep playing sports. Aponte lives with his grandmother, who is his legal guardian, and he had found a second home with the Skippers on the football field and in the wrestling room. The diagnosis was still new when he hit the mats last season, but he remained a regular in the lineup and won two matches at the state tournament.
“He battled through it,” Clare said.
In the fall, he played football, working as an undersized but quick defensive lineman for the Skippers. Lupus is marked by flare-ups and toward the end of the season, Aponte fell into one. He missed the last few games as joint pain mounted. When his kidneys became involved, he had to spend a week in the hospital in December.
The disease had at times seemed far away – Aponte worked out all summer with the wrestling team – but it was suddenly front and center.
Amid the flareups and remission, lupus is defined by stages, depending on which parts of the body are affected. The kidney involvement sent Aponte from stage one to stage four. He will need several rounds of dialysis over the next few months. He takes medication in the morning and at night, and sometimes gets hit with nausea, stomach pains and muscle cramps.
When he got out of the hospital, water retention had caused his weight to balloon. Clare, who works as a physical therapist, compared the swelling in his legs to patients in much worse shape.
“My patients with congestive heart failure – that’s what his legs looked like,” Clare said. “For a 17-year-old kid to deal with that, he shouldn’t have to.”
And it was almost wrestling season.
Aponte didn’t think twice about getting back on the mat. He worked to get the weight off and regain some stamina. He was up over 200 pounds from his usual 170, the weight class he had targeted for his senior season, but got back down to his normal range.
“I love the sport and I love all my teammates,” Aponte said. “It’s my senior year and I know I’m going to miss it a lot.”
His doctors weren’t keen on the idea of wrestling with lupus, and neither were his parents and grandmother.
“I talked to them and told them it means a lot to me,” Aponte said. “They were willing to work through it.”
Head coach Dave Petrucci spoke with Aponte’s doctors and a plan was formulated. There would be plenty of rest built in. There would be none of the pushing to extremes that wrestlers pride themselves on. And, for Aponte, there would be no quitting.
“It was a team effort to get on the same page and make sure everybody has his overall health as the primary interest,” Clare said. “His health is the thing everybody is concerned most about. If we can fit this in, even better. And we’re going to try because that’s what he wants.”
Aponte was named a captain when he rejoined the team. It would have been an easy choice even without the response to adversity. Aponte rarely missed a summer workout. He’s a vocal leader and a presence at practices.
“He does everything you’d want from a captain,” Clare said. “He’s on time, he gets everybody going, he makes sure nobody’s messing around. He’s universally well-liked by everyone and his work ethic is second to none. He’s an inspirational guy just by being Isaiah, nevermind having to battle lupus to be a part of this.”
Aponte made his season debut Jan. 12 in a dual meet against Chariho. With multiple wrestlers in his weight class, a team would typically have wrestle-offs in practice to determine a varsity spot, but the coaching staff has made it clear that it’s Aponte’s spot when he’s healthy, and his teammates are fine with that.
He lost his first match, and on top of it, his shoulder popped out. It’s not connected to lupus.
“That’s just having me having a bad shoulder,” Aponte said with a laugh.
He wrestled in a tournament that weekend and showed some positive signs while he continued to battle the shoulder. His conditioning isn’t there yet, but he’s working on it.
“I felt as if I could beat the kid, but I wasn’t strong enough,” Aponte said of one of his tournament matches. “I’ve got to build up my endurance and keep working.”
If all goes according to plan, Aponte will be able to wrestle in the rest of the team’s dual meets and get at least part of the senior season he envisioned. He’s trying to catch up on the power points used to determine state tournament qualification and is hoping to finish the year as a state place-winner, something that’s been a goal since last season.
Whatever happens, he has already done the work of a captain.
“I hope they’re as inspired as I am,” Clare said. “We do highlight it. We’ll say, ‘You guys are coming up with excuses about why you didn’t work hard or why something didn’t go well, look at him. He’s got every excuse in the world. Do you see him complaining? No. He’s working.’ This sport is hard enough. For him to have to fight that fight just to get on the mat, just to get beat up in practice, is not a task many people would try. I think he’s an amazing person just for that, for battling back and for wanting to be here as bad as he does.”
Lupus is a chronic disease with no cure. It will be something Aponte has to battle for the rest of his life, but he says he tries not to think about that part of it.
His focus is on something else.
“I feel like every time I’m on the mat, I’m wrestling a little bit better,” he said. “I just have to work harder and harder.”