A Former Pro Wrestler Is Helping Monica Sereda In Her Push For LA 2028

Tricycle rider Monica Sereda made her Paralympic Games debut three years ago in Tokyo at age 53 and nearly won a medal in the road race T1-2.

Then, the adventure really began.

She had a rotator cuff injury two years ago after a fall, followed by toe fusion surgery in February 2023. Then came a tendon injury in her thumb. Three years, three surgeries.

When Sereda returned to racing last spring for the first time in more than two years, she won a spot on the road world cup team, and then a bronze medal in the WT2 class in the world cup finale in May in Maniago, Italy.

Though Sereda did not make the cut for the U.S. Paralympic Team that competed in Paris, she got the call for the UCI Para-cycling Road World Championships a few weeks after the Games in Zurich, Switzerland, and posted a pair of fourth-place finishes there.

“I felt good going into worlds,” Sereda said. “I was ready to see where I was compared to my competition, since the world cups in the spring. Although I had hoped to place higher, I felt it was a good measurement and gave me some insight in what I need to work on for 2025 and towards LA28.”

And now here’s the really fun part: Sereda, a retired U.S. Army veteran and former University of Kansas track and basketball athlete, has turned to a former pro wrestler for help.

Drew Donaldson, who went by various ring names including Chase Donovan when he wrestled in the World Wrestling Entertainment circuit from 2007 to 2012, is working with Sereda in her fitness training.

“I feel like I’ve gotten not only stronger, but healthier because of the way he’s training me,” Sereda said. “Biomechanics, he’s so good.”

Sereda said she has almost fainted after completing a time trial due to having neuropathy in her left leg.

“I start to cry,” she said. “I have no idea. It’s just part of the process.”

Weight training with Donaldson has helped, Sereda said.

“He sees how my leg is off my foot,” Sereda said. “Sometimes when I walk, my left foot’s off. He’s been working with me, like doing a farmer carry with a kettle bell and having me doing certain exercises just to help with your thoracic (spine), like your gait. Everything stems from your thoracic, so I was like, ‘Why am I feeling this stuff?’ I don’t really do upper body.

“He goes, ‘No, we are doing everything with the thoracic.’

“So he started building with the thoracic all the way to the hip, having me stand certain ways,” Sereda said.

The results arrived quickly. After being named to the world cup team in April, she nearly reached the podium in her first world cup time trial in Ostend, Belgium, in early May. She did make the podium two weeks later in Maniago, finishing third in the time trial and fourth in the road race. She was the top American in her WT2 class at both world cup stops.

After that, she moved to a friend’s house near St. Petersburg, Florida, with her service dog, Biscuit — who was a big hit in a ceremony for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams at the White House in May 2022. Sereda followed a schedule that had her riding at 8 o’clock every morning and hitting a gym in the afternoon for specialized training that shifted from day to day. One day, it was upper body; another day, quads or hamstrings.

All this came nearly 40 years after Sereda became a KU Jayhawk because of a chance meeting with Lynette Woodard, a two-time Olympian who was the top all-time scorer in women’s college basketball history until Caitlin Clark showed up. Sereda was on her way to track practice at Kansas one day when she saw Woodard shooting baskets by herself at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence.

“I was shagging balls for her,” Sereda said.

After talking about her love for hoops, Woodard told Sereda, “Why don’t you walk on?”

Sereda did, and played for one semester.

What followed was her Army service, beginning in 1987 and including a number of deployments. She sustained a traumatic brain injury during a deployment and then neck and back injuries caused by an automobile accident. After retiring from the Army in 2011 and taking up the trike a few years later, Sereda quickly moved to the international stage. She competed in her first world championships in 2017. She almost grabbed a medal in her Paralympic debut in Tokyo, finishing fourth in the road race T1-2 after finishing seventh in the time trial.

Sereda is now focusing on getting ready for the 2025 season, the first year of the quad cycle leading toward a home Paralympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. After evacuating her home in North Carolina due to Hurricane Helene, she moved permanently to Florida. In addition to working with Donaldson, she is also being trained by Rick Babington, a cycling coach based in California.

“I’m still training weekly with Drew Donaldson, who has both my weight training and nutrition dialed in,” Sereda said. “Rick Babington has my training on the bike nailed down. We all three communicate and have set goals for the upcoming season.”

Paul D. Bowker has been writing about Olympic and Paralympic sports since 1996, when he was an assistant bureau chief in Atlanta. He is a freelance contributor to USParaCycling.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.