MULVANE – When the Class 4A boys wrestling championships begin Friday in Salina, Mulvane junior Chris Dietrich will be there, ready to test his skills against the state's best in the 195-pound weight class.
 
Nothing about that would have seemed improbable a year ago, when Dietrich capped his first state appearance with a sixth-place finish while competing at 160 pounds.
 
But a moment in time can change everything.
 
This weekend will mark six months since Dietrich was badly injured when he was struck by a sport-utility vehicle during his morning walk to classes at Mulvane High School. The right side of Dietrich's body sustained the brunt of the trauma when the SUV's driver – who said she didn't see Dietrich against the early-morning sunlight – hit him at a crosswalk near his home northeast of the school.
 
"It's pretty amazing," said Eric Dietrich, Chris' father. "In August, he was in an ICU and at a point he didn't really recognize us. He had some major medical issues. We weren't thinking about sports."
 
Dietrich, the Capitol Federal True Blue® Student of the Week, has come a long way in a relatively short period.
 
On Jan. 20, Dietrich competed in his first wrestling match of the season at the Douglass Jamboree. During the course of his abbreviated season, his thrill of competing rose to another level as he qualified for state with a fourth-place finish at last week's Andale regional.
 
"It was really just all I wanted to do at that point in time," said Dietrich, who is 10-5 and will face unbeaten Wamego junior Hayden Oviatt in his opening-round state match. "My mindset was if I come back to wrestling, I want to show everyone I can do what I did before."
 
The scars on Dietrich's right arm were still visible at practice this week as he trained with state-qualifying teammates Andy Huynh, Trent Moses, Ethan Irvine and his cousin, Hunter Dietrich. But it only hints at his litany of injuries from that Aug. 26 morning.
 
Broken right ankle. Torn foot ligament. Fractured sacrum. Bruised kidney. There were numerous other fractures, and a brain bleed that sapped his recollection of the incident and several ensuing days.

 
A witness to the accident quickly called 911. Dietrich's mother, Sheila, summoned Eric, a Sedgwick County Sheriff's deputy who was in Topeka for a training session.
 
"It was probably the worst drive a parent can make," said Eric Dietrich, a 1994 Mulvane graduate and former wrestler for the Wildcats. "It seemed like it took four hours and it's only two. You just don't know what to expect.
 
"I recall my wife telling me he's screaming and I thought well, that's probably a good thing. Then he's alive. That's the way I looked at it. He's got to pull through."
 
Dietrich's recovery path through late August and most of September took him from Wichita's Wesley Medical Center ICU to a floor unit, to a rehabilitation center and finally home, shortly before his 17^th birthday on Sept. 28.
 
"It was painful," Dietrich said of the early recovery period. "I was getting a whole bunch of shots. But it was encouraging to see how much you can progress. I went from a wheelchair to where I was getting better using crutches. I just wanted to get back as soon as possible. I knew that I could if I worked hard enough."
 
Dietrich attended a Mulvane football game shortly after he returned home, and was back in school the following Monday. Teachers worked with Dietrich, a straight-A student who was inducted into National Honor Society this year, to navigate through missed assignments. He said the biggest challenge was catching up in Spanish, where missed vocabulary lessons made it difficult to move forward.
 
Meanwhile, he eagerly reconnected with Mulvane's cross country team. Dietrich finished 20^th as a sophomore at the 4A state meet in Wamego.
 
"I couldn't stay away from my team," Dietrich said. "I was rolling around on my knee scooter, waiting at the end of races and timing everyone."
 
Former Mulvane football coach Dave Fennewald, who is now the school's assistant principal, noticed Dietrich's progression from wheelchair to scooter to crutches and a walking boot after the holidays. He also saw the impact Dietrich's return had on others.
 
"I would take a school full of Chris Dietrichs," Fennewald said. "We would just have an amazing place."
 
Dietrich, who ran on Mulvane's state-qualifying, 3200-meter relay team last spring, resumed weight training a couple weeks after his dismissal from the rehab center. Unable to complement it with running, he still wanted to work out with the wrestling team and approached Wildcats coach Jesse Myers.
 
"The main thing was just getting with his parents and making sure everybody was on the same page," Myers said. "From the beginning, he just said I want to be part of everything I can be. I felt really fortunate in the fact that he's knowledgeable and coachable.
 
"At the start, I told him the best thing you can do is talk to some of these young kids and work with them. It was like having a fifth coach in the room."
 
Dietrich did kettlebell workouts to try to replace some of the cardiovascular training he was missing. His weight climbed to 205 pounds after the accident, and he wrestled in the 220-pound class in his competitive return.
 
"I've never been more tired after matches my entire life," Dietrich said. "As a cross country runner, last year in wrestling I'd go in with all my energy and walk out with all my energy. This year, I'm getting tired in the first period and it's pretty humbling."
 
It has also been inspiring.
 
Dietrich's first match was briefly stopped when the mat caused scars on his leg to bleed. He won by pin when it resumed, then won another match that evening.
 
"I'm still pretty speechless about it," Myers said.
 
Dietrich, who wears a left knee pad to cover his sores, is wrestling at about 85 percent, in Myers' estimation. He has adjusted his shot technique and compensates for subtle flexibility issues that are accentuated by wrestling at a higher weight class.
 
Still, Dietrich, who lost 2-0 to El Dorado's Brock Schell in the regional semifinals, came back on the consolation side to pin Carmelo Orosco of Ulysses and secure the top-four finish and the second state berth of his high school career.
 
"That's the special part of all this," Fennewald said. "Just coming back would have been way awesome in itself. To reach that pinnacle and get to a state tournament again, that just shows the grit and resolve of this young man, and the support he's had from his family."