McGrone Makes Mom Proud: Part I

As Cameron McGrone lay on the field with a torn ACL last October 14th, the 2018 Indianapolis linebacker knew his junior season at Lawrence Central High School was finished and by the time his parents had rushed down to the field, he was wondering about his future beyond that.

“One of the first things he said when he got hurt was, ‘What about The Opening? What about Nike?’” his mother, Lynn Redd recalls.

The prestigious Opening Finals in Oregon were almost nine months away, but McGrone would have to be ready to perform in order to earn an invitation much earlier than that.

“I told him, ‘Son, we’re going to work as hard as we can as fast as we can and get you back,’” his mother tried reassuring him. “‘You won’t miss out on that.’”

But at the same time, the injury provided a perfect illustration of what his mother and father, David Redd, had always warned him about.

“My husband and I have always told him, ‘You can be at the top and with a snap of a finger, it can all come crumbling down,’” Mrs. Redd says. “There was no better example of that than when he hurt himself last year.

“He knows all of these blessings and gifts he has can be taken away in a moment’s time, so you enjoy it while you’re at the top, enjoy it while you have it. You stay humble because you never know and it can be taken away from you in a second. He’s always had that in the back of his mind. That’s why he’s very grateful.”

An A-student, McGrone had a list of 21 offers before narrowing it down to Notre Dame, Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Wisconsin last month. He has since narrowed his list down even further.

“He knows he’s blessed in both academics and football,” his mother says. “That’s something we always tried to tell him.”

McGrone has always been wise beyond his years as well, according to Redd.

“That’s just from growing up around the type of family we have,” his mother says.

Irish Sports Daily McGrone with his parents.

McGrone grew up with multiple strong male role models, including his father, his late grandfather, F/Sgt. James L. McGrone, (Ret.) and his uncle, Chris McGrone. Redd says her son has always displayed leadership qualities.

“I attribute a lot of that to his grandfather, who has passed away, and to my husband,” she says.

She called her father “Cameron’s biggest fan.” He served in the Army, which provided an additional reason for excitement when McGrone was recently selected to play in next year’s U.S. Army All-American Bowl.

“He was always in leadership roles, leading platoons and things like that in the Vietnam War,” Mrs. Redd says. “He was always a leader himself. Cameron took to him. They were like best friends.

“We’ve always known about the Army Bowl from my father and him being a sports fan. We used to watch it when Cameron was younger. I don’t know if Cameron remembers those times when we would watch it at my parents’ house. With my father being a football fan plus a retired Army man, he was always into it.”

When she started dating her husband, who she married when Cameron was nine years old, he became an additional source of admiration.

“It kind of just transferred on to him,” Mrs. Redd recalls. “They have a really, really awesome relationship. He acts a lot like him as well because he came in during those influential years of his life.”

His grandfather was an “old-school football player,” but David is the one who actually got McGrone first interested in the sport.

“I would give a lot of credit to my husband and my father for the way Cameron’s demeanor is,” Redd says. “Both of them are quiet men, but strong men, men of few words. When they talk, everybody stops to listen. Just being of high integrity. It’s something we’ve always pushed, representing our family name well.”

And his uncle, Chris McGrone, has made sure to be there as well, often filling in when McGrone’s father can’t get off of work.

While The Opening regionals were on his mind right away, McGrone had something much more immediate to worry about after his injury. He’d already had plans to take an unofficial visit to Notre Dame to see the Irish play Stanford just hours after his injury and wasn’t about to postpone it.

“He really wanted to be a part of the experience,” his mother says. “A couple of his favorite schools were playing each other.”

His mother told him it would be alright to miss it and was ready to call the coaches in South Bend to let them know they would have to cancel.

Irish Sports Daily McGrone at Notre Dame the day after his injury.

“But Cameron didn’t want to,” she remembers. “He said, ‘Mom, just ice my knee. Let me get this brace on it.’ The physical trainers at his school gave him crutches and we went up.”

So they padded his leg and put the seats down in the truck so he could sit in the very back row. The gameday atmosphere put the pain of the injury out of his mind, but the emotions began wearing off on the ride back to Indianapolis.

“We stopped at the gas station and packed his leg with ice packs and got home as soon as we could so he could rest and relax before seeing the doctors,” Redd remembers.

McGrone was quiet about the injury for a while, according to his mother, and the family was pretty nervous, but also confident given the recent success players have had returning from ACLs. That confidence received a further boost when they linked up with Doctor Tom Klootwyk, an orthopedic surgeon on staff with the Indianapolis Colts.

McGrone had to wait a bit for the swelling to go down before he could have surgery, but once he was ready to start rehab, he went 100 percent.

“Cameron was an A-plus patient,” his mother says. “He did everything the doctors told him. If I saw him falling off track, I’d chase him around the house with ice packs and ibuprofen just to make sure he was doing everything the doctors told him to.”

When Nike released its regional schedule for The Opening in January, McGrone learned exactly what his timeline looked like. Redd wasn’t concerned with the location of the regionals, which is why she glanced past Midwestern events in Chicago and Cleveland and right to the bottom, to the very last one, which was in Oakland, Calif.

“I went to Doctor Klootwyk and I said, ‘What do you think about May 21st?’” she remembers.” The doctor nodded his head and said, ‘Yep. We’ll get him back before May 21st. Watch, we’re going to get him back.’

“Everything he said was positive. He reassured me, Dave and Cameron that he was going to be fine and that he was going to be able to be back on the field like nothing had ever happened.”

The family put their trust in Klootwyk and McGrone worked as hard as he could. One of the physical therapists at Lawrence Central, Dustin Melvin, had previously been on staff at Notre Dame and was also very involved with McGrone’s road to recovery. So McGrone was doing physical therapy with his doctors twice a week and other training with Melvin after school three days a week.

“Cameron never gave up,” his mother says. “He fought through his rehab and was back within no time…He worked as hard as he could and was running sprints within months.”

And just as Klootwyk predicted, when May 21st rolled around, McGrone was ready to compete for one of the final remaining invitations to Oregon at the very last Opening Regional, so the family made the trip out to California in order for him to do so.

Redd admits there were times when she was nervous, but adds her brother was even more nervous.

“He’s from the old-school era where when you tore your ACL, you were done,” she says. “It was nerve-wracking for him to watch Cameron out in Oakland. I could see him tensing up and holding the fence really tight.”

McGrone didn’t just make it through the event though, he excelled. Still, by the time he boarded the plane back to the Midwest, he hadn’t realized his ultimate goal of attaining an invitation to The Opening Finals in Oregon just yet.

Nike Football McGrone at The Opening in Oregon.

But not long after getting back to Indianapolis, McGrone got the call he’d been waiting months for.

“It was awesome,” Redd says. “We were actually in the car on the way home from school when he got the call. He was excited and banging the roof of the car.

“We were making sure we were driving safely, but were all in the car celebrating together.”

And late last month, Redd and her brother made the trip back to the West Coast to see McGrone compete against some of the nation’s top prospects at Nike World Headquarters.

“It was awesome,” Redd says. “It was like him fulfilling one of his lifelong dreams.

“It was just awesome to see Cameron light up. Even though Cameron’s team didn’t do that well, just to see him light up and the fact of him just being there. It’s a parent’s happiest moment to see their kid living out their dream.”

Check back tomorrow to learn more about McGrone's recruiting process and what will be most important when he picks a school.