One meeting at a Pennsylvania rehabilitation center nearly 10 years ago turned into a cycling friendship.

At the time, Cody Wills, a spinal cord patient who this year became a cyclist on the world cup circuit at age 32, had little idea about Brandon Lyons, who in 2017 became the first handcyclist resident athlete at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

They were just two guys from south central Pennsylvania; one, from Harrisburg, severely injured in an ATV accident in 2011 and the other, Lyons, from nearby Mechanicsburg, paralyzed from the chest down in a diving accident in 2014.

“We didn’t know each other then,” said Wills, who was serving as a mentor to other patients at a rehab center while he was also rehabbing. “I came in and just kind of talked to him and stuff and show him some car transfers, hand-controls stuff.”

That 2014 meeting at the Penn State Health Rehabilitation Hospital in Hummelstown was just the start. Wills kept in touch with Lyons and later noticed on social media that Lyons had turned to cycling just months after his injury.

“He started posting all these races,” Wills said. “I saw him on these race bikes and everything. That’s what got me to look up local races that I could go do.”

The cycling bug bit. Wills, a handcyclist competing in the MH2 class, entered his first local races in 2018. A year later, he competed in the national championships. This year, he made the U.S. Paralympics Cycling road world cup team for the first time and will make his world championships debut in August in Glasgow, Scotland.

Lyons, a handcyclist in the MH3 class who won his first world cup road race earlier this year in Ostend, Belgium, is also on the world championships team following a first-place finish at the selection event.

“Roles kind of flipped and I was reaching out to him to get advice on racing and bike setup and everything,” Wills said of Lyons. “And now it’s pretty cool where we’re both at.”

They’re just a couple of guys from Pennsylvania going to Scotland.

“I’ve been having a blast with it,” said Wills, who has never been to Scotland but is in a family that is 21 percent Scottish, he says. “Just taking everything in and learning as much as possible. Each race, I’ve been getting better.”

The results clearly show that. When Wills made his world cup debut in April in Maniago, Italy, he finished seventh in the time trial. Since then, Wills had a better finish with nearly every race, including making the podium twice at the world cup final in Huntsville, Alabama, finishing second in the time trial for a silver medal and third in the road race for a bronze medal.

“It’s just been one thing after another,” he said. “It’s been so exciting.”

And for Wills, it was new.

“It was a big learning curve for me,” he said of his world cup debut in a European country where he had never been before. “The amount of support that Team USA gives us and how they have just basically your whole day planned out for you. What time you’re going to be leaving for the course, what time you’re beginning warmups, finishing, having to align.

“Everything is planned out to the minute,” Wills added. “I was just trying to basically take it all in in Italy to see how things operate and stuff.”

Two months later, following two fourth-place world cup finishes in Ostend, a sixth-place finish in the road race in Maniago, and a strong finish at a U.S. Paralympics Cycling selection race in Janesville, Wisconsin, Wills was named to the world championships team to rock his world even more.

“When I got the email that night,” Wills said, “it was just really exciting for me, knowing that I made it and I’ll be going to worlds.”

“Even just thinking how this year has been going for me,” he added. “My first time getting on the roster for the world cups. And then Huntsville, I got two podiums there and now heading to world championships. Every time I get to put the Team USA jersey on, it’s just a really good feeling because I’ve been working towards this for so many years. And now it’s all kind of coming together at once.”

And right by him is his Pennsylvania buddy, Brandon Lyons, who won a silver medal on a relay team during his world championships debut in 2019.

“Basically, every race like all over the country and all over the world, we still get to hang out,” Wills said.

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 USParaSnowboarding.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.

Cody Wills Races Toward World Championships Debut Alongside Pennsylvania Friend Brandon Lyons

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