WW South’s Conner more than meets the eye

Wheaton Warrenville South wrestler Billy Conner once was penalized a point for locking hands around an opponent.

At the time he was ticked. Now he laughs.

“I just went, ‘What the heck,’ because I can’t even lock my hands,” he said. “My hands don’t even clasp, they don’t even touch each other.”

Conner’s story, though, is a touching tale of determination. Adopted by David and Mary Conner out of a Thailand orphanage when he was 5, Billy was born with oral mandibular limb hypogenesis syndrome.

“All that means,” David Conner said, “is an underdevelopment of mouth, jaw and limbs.”

For Billy that means he lacks hands — his arms end between the elbow and wrist — and his right tibia ends about 2 inches below the knee.

In a sport where two sturdy legs and grasping hands are crucial, the sophomore’s varsity wrestling record of 20-15 with 8 pins and a fourth-place DuPage Valley Conference finish at 103 pounds is no less than amazing.

“He obviously is a perseverer and an overcomer,” his father said. “He can do anything he puts his mind to.”

Billy wears a prosthesis on his lower right leg. Per Illinois High School Association rules he removes it before a match and does much of his mat work from his knees or in a squat position. Off the mat he uses no arm prosthetics.

Imagine facing an opponent who first takes off his sweats, then a leg.

“They think that, ‘Oh, here’s a kid without hands and one limb, this is going to be an easy match.’ I just go out there and try my best,” said Conner, 17.

Billy can’t guess his prospects had he stayed in Thailand: “I can’t imagine.”

He came to the Conners, and to America, somewhat by happenstance. Mary and David Conner worked in humanitarian efforts for a decade in Thailand between 1980-98, taking breaks for marriage and college. They met as students at Wheaton College.

The birth of their first son, Andrew, now 18, was a difficult one. It was recommended that they not have any more children on their own. Adoption had been in their long-range plans, but now it seemed the couple’s sole option for a larger family.

A Bangkok physician identified a baby girl in a Thailand state orphanage they might consider adopting. During the 16-month process to bring home their daughter, Kiran, they met a 3-year-old Billy, in the same orphanage and outfitted with a crude prosthetic leg. Nearly two years after Kiran joined the Conners, in September 1998, so did Billy. (Better still, they later were able to conceive another child, 11-year-old Timothy.)

“Billy’s a survivor,” David Conner said.

“He was the only kid in the orphanage where he was at that was handicapped, so he kind of was set apart. Had he not been adopted eventually he probably would have ended up on the street. He just learned to survive his whole life. He can put up with an awful lot, and getting his face ground into a mat, that is really not a big deal.”

Neither David nor Mary Conner coddle their son. The more Billy did for himself, they felt, the better prepared he’d be as a young man and an adult.

“It has not been an easy road, but he’s tenacious, he is very competitive,” David Conner said. “Anything he wants to try — riding bikes, he can get on the trampoline with one leg and do front and back flips — anything he wants to do he can do.

“He swims, he does everything that you and I do. He’ll throw a football, hit a baseball, play soccer. You name it, he can do it.”

Responding to his older brother Andrew, a wrestler of whom Billy said “always put his moves on me,” and due to his quickness and strength, he started wrestling in seventh-grade at Wheaton’s Edison Middle School.

Conner claims a personal-best 52 pull-ups and said he lifts nearly 200 pounds on the biceps curl machine. He is working to strengthen his right leg but can press 210 pounds with his left.

“I have the upper-body strength that most kids don’t have because I have to use my upper limbs to help me do stuff,” said Conner, rifling through past wrestling awards and producing one for fourth place at a seventh-grade invitational, another for third the next year. “So the headlocks not always, but sometimes, will help me in a match.”

Ryan Ferguson, a 1992 Lake Park graduate in his 11th and last season as WW South’s varsity wrestling coach, is expanding Conner’s arsenal of techniques but remains astounded by the boy’s feats given his physical challenges.

“He adapts to a situation,” said Ferguson, who calls Conner a carefree spirit off the mat, a fierce battler on it.

“When he’s on his feet although he may not have hands or a leg, his ability to attack his opponent is still there just like any other kid,” Ferguson said. “He has that ability to be physical, to snap down an opponent and get physical on their head, on their arms, on their wrists, and then attack the opponent’s legs. He’s very quick.

“When he’s on top he’s still able to break down his opponent, get him flat on the mat, and he does a great job with his arm series, he does a great job with his half-Nelsons, so he’s able to stabilize that opponent on top. And on the bottom he can’t be ridden. He’s a very tough person to ride out. He has a great sit-out series, a great stand-up, he is able to move and be very agile and quick.”

Balance can be an issue when a foe “runs me around,” Conner said. Still, he believes his situation presents certain advantages.

“If I keep my (left) leg back it’s a lot harder for them to score leg points,” he said. “Plus, I’m lower to the ground so they have to reach farther to my legs. That helps me because if they’re reaching down I can spin around quicker.”

It is unwise to consider Conner anything but an equal adversary. One hesitant opponent turned to his coach and asked how to proceed. The Tiger pounced.

“That’s when I took the initiative and took advantage of him,” Conner said.

Some opponents, he said, have been “annoyed that they got whipped by a handicapped kid.”

The prevailing attitude comes from the students and parents who call out to him when they see him at the mall, wrestlers who approach him after meets to call him “awesome,” he said.

Billy Connor’s achievement speaks for itself.

“I’m just trying to, sort of, inspire other handicapped people,” he said. “Just make them realize that they have more than what they think they have. That’s what I want to try and get them to know.”