UNWAVERING BRAVERY: Pennsylvania youth relearned to crawl, walk and swallow before reaching the state tournament podium in first-ever season

Photos: Left: Nicholas Scattolino spent five days in a medically-induced coma in June of 2020. Right: In March of 2023, in his first season of wrestling, he placed eighth at the state tournament.

By Tristan Warner

As the old proverb goes, “You must learn to crawl before you can walk.”

The expression represents the notion that one must build basic, fundamental skills in a particular discipline before advancing to more complicated steps.

For Nicholas Scattolino, in progression, he learned to crawl, then walk, then run, etc.; just as most other kids do. However, at just nine years of age in the spring of 2020, the Unionville, Pa., native was temporarily stripped of those basic motor functions and forced to relearn practically every physical skill he had ever mastered.

On June 1, 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic in which kids across America were wrapping up the school year remotely, Jennifer Scattolino, Nicholas’ mom, noticed something was off with her youngest of three sons.

“He was fighting me on his schoolwork that day, but I didn’t know why,” Jennifer recalled. “Later, around 8 PM, he and his dad came home. He looked up at the ceiling, head turned a little bit, took a few steps, and then collapsed into the couch. The ambulance got there and the rushed him to the hospital.”

What ensued would be a completely unforeseen, shocking next few months that flipped the Scattolinos’ otherwise ordinary world upside down, as the third grader spent 47 nights in the hospital, five of which were in a medically-induced coma.

This story appeared in the Dec. 25 issue of WIN Magazine. Click on the cover or call 888-305-0606 to subscribe.

While the doctors initially struggled to understand what was happening medically, eventually it was discovered that Nicholas suffered multiple clinical seizures despite the absence of any convulsions.

He suffered from an “acquired brain injury” (ABI) as opposed to the more commonly talked about “traumatic brain injury” (TBI).

“It was out of nowhere,” Jennifer added. “Epilepsy is not something we have in our medical background, whatsoever. It was not typical.

“Once you have a seizure, your body recovers kind of like coming out of a drunken stupor,” she explained. “He seemed normal and could follow the doctor’s commands, but the whole time his brain was in an epileptic status even though you would have never known.

“When they couldn’t get it to stop, he was sedated and put on a ventilator. It was five days before it stopped, and 10 days total before the anesthesia wore off. He had to learn how to redo everything.”

Nicholas spent nearly seven weeks between two hospitals. With strict COVID guidelines in place, Nicholas’ dad and brothers were not allowed to see him, but Jennifer never left his side.

Navigating through many challenges, including his body not metabolizing various medicines, at last, Nicholas was finally able to return home on July 17, 2020, for the first time in nearly two full months.

“Today, he is off all medicine, and if you didn’t know his story, you would never know,” his devoted mother described. “Cognitively, there is still some thinking delay … you have to rephrase some things to help him understand sometimes.”

Shortly thereafter, Nicholas returned to the gridiron to play his favorite sport of football and returned to otherwise normal daily routines.

Three years later, the family was surprised when their youngest son, whose oldest brother Dominic is a varsity quarterback and an elite baseball prospect, and other brother Anthony excels as a lacrosse player, announced he was going out for wrestling.

“I had to choose a winter sport, and I am not very good at basketball,” Nicholas said. “I am a visual learner. I learned quickly and took all the moves in. I liked it right away.

“I thought it would help put me in better shape and it did. Wrestling has helped me tremendously. It helped me build up stamina and (with) tackling for football.”

His father, Tommy, admitted he had zero experience with wrestling but was immediately encouraged by what he was witnessing.

“Given everything he went through, it was impressive to see him relearn how to crawl and then go to wrestling … how on earth did we get here?” Tommy said. “The arm strength alone … he couldn’t even pinch two fingers together. How is he doing this? We don’t know. To see later, it is an incredible story.”

Nicholas took some lumps in his inaugural wrestling season, but the diligent learner caught on to the sport in a way most newcomers take years to adjust to. He gravitated toward the visual learning aspect of wrestling, his mom asserted.

“He was very much into all the technical details and the chain reactions,” Jennifer said. “Nicholas was calculated, had great coaches and watched videos on how to do it. He still struggles with reading comprehension, but where he is overcompensating is the ability to naturally react.”

The father-son duo of Dan and George Baughan helped mold Nicholas into the wrestler he has become. Dan, a self-proclaimed basketball guy whose son, Dylan, has wrestled for eight years, encouraged the Scattolinos to send Nicholas to a spring Keystone State Championship qualifier.

“Nicholas decided wrestling was going to be his thing,” Dan Baughan said. “He got the bug immediately. He loved the technical part, the working out, the discipline, and he dove right in.”

The family was reluctant to partake in the postseason, firmly believing their first-year son, who had only been on a mat for three months by then, would get devoured by more experienced brutes.

Not only did he qualify, with a basketball coach in his corner as Dan pointed out, but a few weeks later he found himself wrestling in the Keystone State Championships in Reading, Pa,. in the 11 & 12 200-pound division despite only weighing 180 pounds.

After losing his first match, Nicholas reeled off three-straight victories before falling in his fifth match of the prestigious event.

“Nobody in their family knew a blessed thing about wrestling,” laughed Dan, who assists his father George at Patton Middle School. “They didn’t understand the Blood Round. They were getting ready to leave the tournament and didn’t realize he medaled. It was mind boggling for them.”

George Baughan, who traded spots with his son to coach Nicholas on the second day, remembered the momentous occasion.

“He just kept on winning. We couldn’t believe it,” George said. “When he finally did lose, we thought he was done and packed up to go home. We walked by the guy he lost to and congratulated him, and he said, ‘Where are you going? You have another match.’”

George, who works with Nicholas every day, recognized his rare natural aptitude for wrestling right away, largely because of his old-fashioned approach.

“He has this ability to turn it on when he needs to. He is unselfish and never brags. Kind of a throwback to the old days when guys weren’t pumping their chest and looking for the crowd … he does his job and wants to learn as much as he can.

“He has this mentality that he is going to get better and put it all on the line. I didn’t find out about the epileptic seizures until later. My joke was that, when he had the seizures and the coma, he must have gotten superpowers.”

Nicholas himself, now an eighth-grade middle school team captain in just his second year, credits the Baughans for his success.

“The sport came natural to me; I’m not really sure how,” Nicholas said. “I just learned everything I could. Thinking quick is easier when I know what I am doing, so I keep trying to learn all these attacks and counter attacks. My coaches get us ready for everything.”

While the Scattolinos live cautiously optimistic that Nicholas’ rare medical episode could be in the rearview mirror, both parents believe the family has emerged stronger on the other end.

“You have to advocate for your child,” said Tommy, who didn’t see his wife or ailing son for nearly 50 days while clinging to hope with the two elder sons.

Praising his wife’s efforts, he mentioned, “Her understanding of what he needed, what the doctors needed to do, pushing them in the right direction, trying to figure out what drugs worked, and which didn’t … we wouldn’t be here today without her.”

“I would’ve never imagined we’d be where we are now based on where we were then,” Jennifer echoed. “Find support and never stop advocating for your child.”

With a family unit so strong, it is easy to see how Nicholas developed such an uncommon resiliency.