HIBBING — For one of the few times in the past nine months, Jon Tichy will feel like he’s walking on air today.

Tichy, 16, of Hibbing is being presented by the Wishes & More foundation with a new Yamaha 350 Bruin all-terrain vehicle and a big-game hunting trip with former Minnesota Twin and outdoorsman Kent Hrbek.

Tichy, a wrestler, track, football and baseball athlete at Hibbing High School, has been grappling with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, since last spring.

ALL is a fast-growing cancer of the white blood cells. The disease makes it difficult to fight infection and often causes pain in bones and joints.

Tichy said of being granted two wishes by the foundation: “I can’t wait for it to happen.”

Tichy was diagnosed with the disease in May. Intense chemotherapy treatments started immediately.

Tichy and family members spent much of May and June at the University of Minnesota hospital and stayed in the Ronald McDonald House.

“It was difficult,” Tichy said. “Whenever you get the treatment, it keeps you pretty sick. After each treatment, it was hard to walk.”

An outdoors lover and hunter, Tichy was forced by the disease and treatments to give up all his recreational activities.

Because his immune system was weakened from treatments, he couldn’t attend school for fear of contracting an illness from other students.

On Monday, he returned to school for the first time since May.

A 135- to 140-pound wrestler before being diagnosed, he’s also back in the wrestling room, working out with teammates — even though a portal for chemotherapy treatments remains in his chest. “Jon is the all-American kid in my mind,” said Karla Blomberg, president of the Wishes & More foundation. “He’s got a killer smile and is one of those all-American boys that a mother and father would be proud to have as a son.”

Wishes & More, a Fridley, Minn.-based foundation, grants wishes to children fighting terminal or life-threatening conditions.

Money to grant wishes is raised through donations and fundraising events, Blomberg said. Within the last two years, the foundation has granted wishes to 68 children, she said.

Tichy’s father, Mike, says although the initial diagnosis was devastating, Jon has proven to be an encouragement.

“You know, the psychological part of it with leukemia is that a person doesn’t really understand it until it happens to your family,” said Mike Tichy, a control room operator at United Taconite in Forbes. “There’s the questions and the ifs. But he’s been an inspiration to me, I’ll tell you that.”

Jon Tichy says his first wish was for a four-wheeler to ride and hunt on the family’s 10-acre property south of Hibbing. His second wish was for a restoration of a 1986 Ford F150 pickup given to him by a church friend. His third wish was to go on a hunting trip.

Later this year, Hrbek and “Kent Hrbek Outdoors” program co-host Eric Gislason will accompany Jon Tichy on an elk hunt in Colorado. Tichy will be outfitted with a full array of safety equipment, according to Wishes & More.

Maybe the teen can even give Hrbek and Gislason a few tips. After all, he shot his first deer this fall on family property.

“I don’t feel more special than anybody else,” Jon Tichy said. “But it’s really nice that they’re doing it.

” By next year, he also hopes to be back wrestling for the Bluejackets. “I’m thinking of next year and wrestling,” he said. “I’m about halfway done with this stuff [treatments]. But I want to stay strong for that.”

To learn more

For more information about Wishes & More, go to www.wishesandmore.org.