Rowan NCAA champion swimmer had the ‘unimaginable’ happen before becoming a Paralympian

She still had staples in her head. Dried blood was still caked in her hair.

Christie Raleigh Crossley — once among the fastest swimmers in the nation at Florida State until an alleged drunk driver halted her career in 2007 — hobbled on crutches, knee stuffed in a brace, down the aisle of her sister’s graduation at Toms River South in 2008, less than 24 hours after being struck by another car in the school’s parking lot.

It would not be the last time Crossley, a 37-year-old single mother of three who had brain surgery in 2019, refused to let adversity derail her plans. Next week, she will swim in multiple events at the Paralympics in Paris.

“I used to joke with people that I was going to write a book titled, Yeah, That [Expletive] Really Happened,” Crossley said in a recent telephone interview. “Once I set my mind on something, it won’t be my mind that stops me.

“There might be other things, like cars,” Crossley quickly added with a laugh, “they seem to be a big problem for me. But if I set my mind to something, I’m going to see it to fruition. I’m going to do everything in my power to make it happen.”

Some call it resilience. Her family calls it stubbornness. Even her friend Myron Rolle, a Rhodes Scholar and neurosurgeon whom Crossley befriended at Florida State, supplies his own explanation.

Whatever it is, Crossley has used it to overcome bullying, costly car accidents, Olympic disappointments, and a brain condition that has debilitated her left side.

Now she is using her story to open doors for her children and inspire those battling their own challenges.

“There is a positive to everything,” she said. “I always say, ‘We’re just making lemonade.’ We were given lemons, and we are just finding the sweetness in every single corner of that lemon.”

Katie Santiago, now 44, was a teenager when she first sensed that her cousin was special.

“I’ve known since she was 9,” said Santiago, who lives in Phoenixville.

“Everything was a competition,” she continued. “[Crossley] always took it differently, especially with swimming. It wasn’t just something fun you did. You could see the competitor in her.”

Crossley played nearly every sport growing up in Toms River, mere minutes from the ocean.

At 10, she got more serious about swimming.

Her father, Bill Raleigh, had been a hall of fame swimmer at St. Peter’s University in Jersey City.

Before long, Crossley was a freshman phenom, setting a state record in the 50-yard freestyle.

Bullies, though, joked relentlessly about her muscular physique.

She was a 14-year-old girl who already felt at odds with societal perceptions of femininity.

“They’re [teasing] you that you’re a man, but you also don’t feel like a woman,” she said. “It was very impactful and very hurtful.

“I was so muscular and I liked ‘boy things’ and I hated dresses. The stereotype of what a girl is in society, I didn’t fit into that.”

Today, Crossley uses the pronouns they/them and she/her, saying, “My pronouns are just for me, and having them up is a declaration: ‘I know who I am and I’m OK with who I am.’”

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She eventually transferred to Pine Crest School, a private school in Florida known for producing swimmers, where she flourished alongside like-minded athletes.

Later, she earned a scholarship to Florida State, where she was named Atlantic Coast Conference freshman of the year and twice earned All-American honors.

But following the NCAA championships in her sophomore year, Crossley was a passenger in a car that was rear-ended by an alleged drunk driver traveling between 70 and 90 mph.

She suffered herniated disks in her neck and back and was told that her days as an elite swimmer were finished.

“I was devastated,” she said. “I lost the thing that had been my whole life forever. It was my identity. I was ‘Christie the swimmer.’”

When she returned to school the next semester, the Seminoles had moved on without her.

Crossley stayed in school through that year, juggling grief, a job, and the loss of her friends, teammates, and purpose.

Police lights approached as Crossley lay facedown the night before her sister Lindsey graduated in June 2008.

“They lit up the area,” Crossley said, “and I could see I was laying in a puddle of blood.”

Crossley and a friend had parked in the school’s lot just before she said a group of kids attacked them with water balloons.

As the kids fled, a car hit Crossley, who landed on the hood before being flung to the ground. It had been just 15 months since the accident at FSU.

She believes that her training as a beach lifeguard kicked in. Careful not to move in case of a spinal cord injury, Crossley remained calm on the phone with emergency services. She even was able to describe the clothes of the driver, whom she said was a minor.

Her knee was badly bruised and her head was bleeding profusely, so, she thinks, little attention was paid to her foot, which had turned inward and dragged slightly behind her as she entered the hospital, a harbinger of neurological issues to come.

“At the time, I wasn’t even thinking about going back to swimming,” she said. “Ridiculously unimaginable things had happened in my life, so I was just like, ‘Wow, what a life.’ I had no idea how much worse it would get.”

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Crossley hadn’t considered returning to the pool until she watched the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where Rebecca Soni, who grew up in Plainsboro, N.J., won gold and silver in the breaststroke. Crossley was happy for Soni, whom she competed against growing up. Her passion for the sport also was reignited.

After healing from her injuries, Crossley moved in with a family member in Baltimore, hoping to train at the famed North Baltimore Aquatic Club, home to Michael Phelps.

She didn’t know any of the club’s coaches but asked if she could train there.

“I was like 25 pounds overweight,” she said, “and I hadn’t swam in a year-and-a-half. They said, ‘Well, you can try.’”

It took a few weeks for her “feel” for the water to return, but by year’s end, Crossley had bested her times at Florida State, ranking 91st in the world in the 50-meter butterfly.

The plan was to attend Auburn in 2010, but Crossley met a guy, got married, and had a child instead.

By 2012, she found a new home at Rowan, where her sister Lindsey swam. Rowan’s swimming coach, Tony Lisa, who died in 2018, had invited Crossley to compete.

Her marriage had ended, so the offer, she said, was a welcome challenge.

The previous comeback in Baltimore and workouts run by NBAC coach Paul Yetter, whom she called a “mad scientist,” gave her confidence that her skill would return once more.

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She also had stayed in shape walking her daughter several miles a day on the boardwalk. About 11 weeks after she got back in the water, Crossley won a Division III national championship at Rowan.

Along the way, however, she also noticed that her left foot occasionally turned inward and her left elbow bowed slightly. She told herself it was likely just a reaction to exhaustion or overworking her muscles.

Injuries later derailed her chances at the London Olympics in 2012, which led to another hiatus from the sport. She also had another child. Then the diagnosis of her brain condition in 2018 changed everything.

Rolle, now 37, was in New York City seeking respite from life as a neurosurgery resident at Harvard Medical School when his phone rang.

It was Crossley.

“I thought it was going to be just catching up,” Rolle said in a telephone interview.

Instead, the fear in her voice was unmistakable.

Crossley was on a ski trip with her children when she was accidentally struck on the head by a ball of ice.

She was in pain but felt well enough for the nearly hourlong drive home. About 10 minutes into the trip, though, her eye began twitching.

Then, her left arm felt heavy. When she returned home, Crossley passed her ski bag from her right hand to her left when the bag fell on the ground. She couldn’t move her left arm at all.

She also lost the ability to speak. Doctors feared a stroke when she arrived at the hospital. Eventually, a cavernoma, a cluster of abnormal blood vessels in her brain, was diagnosed.

It also had begun to bleed, causing periodic paralysis in her left side, among other issues.

Rolle explained the diagnosis, prognosis, medications, risks, what to expect, and what brain surgery would entail.

“For someone like Christie, who I really admire and consider a dear friend,” Rolle said, “I wanted to make sure I took time to answer any of her questions, talk to her softly, and lead her through this process because I know it can be scary.”

Rolle, now a pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he had removed several cavernomas by that time in 2018. He said they can be “insidious,” meaning cavernomas can be present for years, sometimes causing only minor physical manifestations before they are found.

“Cavernomas can be dangerous,” he said. “They can cause permanent disability, even mortality ...”

That Crossley keeps fighting for the life she desires, he said, is proof of a motto they learned at Florida State.

“‘Unconquered spirit’ is something we write on our uniforms, it’s something that we hold dear,” Rolle said. “Christie embodies that.

“It’s no surprise to me that she’s competing in the Paralympics and that she is still a wonderful mother to her three kids and is still optimistic, bright, and cheerful,” he said. “I’m so proud of her. … I think now she can use her experience — and she is — to be an advocate for others.”

Wilma Wong, one of Crossley’s coaches, says Crossley has a “warrior spirit” and is “one of the fiercest competitors” she’s ever known.

Santiago said her cousin owns a distinctive familial trait.

“People call it determination,” she said. “We call it stubbornness. Some of us are more stubborn than others. I’ve started fitness journeys … and then I hit my snooze button. With her, that doesn’t seem to happen, especially with swimming. She could hit snooze and be lazy like 98% of us, but, for some reason, she doesn’t snooze. She just keeps going.”

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Crossley had the cavernoma surgically removed in 2019 and, because of its location, was left with various neurological deficits. She still had Olympic hopes, though, until she returned to the pool months later.

For the first time, her body felt foreign in water.

“If you think about trying to swim with a pool noodle,” she said, “you try to use it and it just goes wherever it wants. That’s exactly what it felt like.

“I was like, ‘Yeah, no, you will not be the feel-good story of the Tokyo Olympics,” she said.

She did, however, find inspiration watching from home. Crossley saw Paralympic swimmer and Eagleville native Michelle Konkoly in an advertisement during the Olympics in Tokyo.

Konkoly, now a physician in Philadelphia, sustained a spinal cord injury after falling from a dorm window at Georgetown.

So, Crossley studied the eligibility requirements for the Paralympics. After realizing she was eligible, she spent six months in physical therapy to ensure her body could handle training.

She returned to the water in January 2022. By March, Crossley had broken her first American record, which previously was held by Konkoly.

Then Crossley won gold in the 100-meter backstroke in last year’s world championships in Manchester, England.

“The goal has always been to take what has happened to us and change it,” she said. “This has become a way for me to not only fulfill a childhood dream and do something that I absolutely love, but to create a future for my children.”

Still, Crossley faces considerable challenges.

Dystonia, a movement disorder that causes muscles to contract, exacerbates most often when she exercises. The fingers on her left hand curl painfully into a fist, while her left arm also spasms. During training, she often only uses her right arm because the muscles in her left arm typically spasm after about 40 seconds.

During races, which generally last little more than a minute, she’ll use her left arm for as long as possible. After races, she struggles to speak. It’s as if, she says, her brain steals resources from other senses so she can race.

She also loses visual acuity during races, so helpers tap Crossley’s shoulder as she approaches the wall as a cue to begin her turn.

There was a time when she resisted assistance, resisted calling herself disabled.

“I was in denial for the longest time,” said Crossley, who can walk a few steps but now relies heavily on a wheelchair. “Using a wheelchair has opened worlds of things for me to do with my kids. It literally gave me the ability to be a mom again. I’m so grateful for that.”

“I would love to have a fully adapted kitchen with lower countertops and a lower stove,” she added with a laugh. “That would be a dream.”

Her children: Apribella, Loughlin, and Raleigh, are fond of arranging the family first names into “CARL.” Often, they’ll cheer, “Go, Team CARL!”

Wong, who is from Los Angeles, will accompany the children to Paris and stay with them.

In a telephone interview, Wong, who also is a mother, said she always tries to help her athletes, especially the mothers, because she knows how difficult it is.

A wheelchair problem slightly delayed Crossley’s departure for Germany, where she will train with Team USA before arriving at the Olympic Village in Paris. Her first race will be Aug. 29.

That will mark nearly two weeks since she will have seen her children, the longest she has gone without them.

Crossley, who also plans to compete in 2028, typically trains at 5 a.m. before her children are awake, so she has the energy for what she calls her most important job: being a mother.

Apribella, 13, also is a major contributor in the household, taking care of her younger siblings, both of whom, Crossley said, have several health issues.

Crossley said her motivation for winning a medal is the Order of Ikkos, the tradition started by the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee in 2008 that allows winners to present a medal to a special supporter.

“Without her, none of this would have been possible,” Crossley said of Apribella. “The past nine months of being a single mom with three kids and training for the Paralympics, hasn’t been easy. I really want to win a medal because I really want to give her that recognition on a global stage. I want her to know just how proud I am of her and just how much gratitude I have for how she has stepped to the plate for me.”