“Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy” – Dan Gable
Every athlete in the history of the universe has thought that their sport is the hardest – until a wrestler walks into the room. While other athletes are debating uniforms, what shoes to wear and their walk-out songs, wrestlers are standing on a mat after fighting for their life, attempting to determine if their arms are still attached and if their lungs still work. Wrestling is absolutely the purest sport that there is. There are no bats, no balls and no teammates to assist; it’s just you, another human, and the sudden realization that you are about to find out who put in more work. Wrestling doesn’t ask you if you are ready, it is about to find out in the next 6 minutes if you are.
Wrestling isn’t just a sport; it’s a full-blown personality trait, for both the athlete and the parent – the parent who literally will give every dollar in the wallet to watch their kid wrestle another full-grown human and pray to whatever God you believe in that they make it out unscathed.
Oh. The best part?
You have to watch the little bitty baby you brought home from the hospital (not all that long ago) get their faces torn open by uncut fingernails, busted noses and lips, get bitten, hair ripped out and take knees and elbows in places that would steamroll a whole grown ass man- and while this happens you are forced to act like you have some sense left in you somewhere and not beat someone’s ass in the process.
If that sounds incredibly intense; good.
That is literally the point.
Welcome to wrestling.
In the great sport of wrestling there is nowhere to hide. There are no benches, no breaks, no substitutions. You step on the mat alone and every single move that is made is direct reflection of your preparation, dedication, discipline and most importantly, the mindset you decide to bring on the mat that day. Win or lose, it’s on you. That kind of accountability builds a different level of confidence- and humility- that few other sports can touch. You can tell who is or was a wrestler just by the way they walk into a room, and I mean I can tell you who wrestled even 30 years since they last were on the mat. This shit makes you TOUGH. Not Instagram tough (but you could look real bad ass if you had someone that could catch those moments on camera), not “I played with a broken hand once” tough, this is being tough every time you warm up, cool down, or settle in for your 6 minutes in the middle of a mat. The conditioning that it takes to make you ready to wrestle is insane. You must be able to explode, defend, scramble, bridge and SO many more physical moves, but at the same time be ready mentally to pull out enough tricks from out of your ass to do any of the above at any moment. Have you ever seen a wrestler bridge? Honestly, someone google that shit and tell me how long you are holding yourself up while another whole ass adult human is spider monkey climbing all over you. The answer is that you are not and you are pinned. So sorry. Not really.
You also must weigh within your weight class to compete. Just trying to remain in your weight class or moving down one class because you have to fill in (because your buddy tore his labrum, ACL, MCL, and is in a neck brace from his last match) will have you running ten million laps in 6 layers of sweats and a beanie for hours, until you throw up the little that you did get to eat that day, in hopes you were able to sweat everything in your body out all the while praying that you finally reach that magic number. Tell me who else is doing that. I am listening.
If you can wrestle, I am fully convinced that you can handle anything physically. Not only does wrestling make you into a beefed-out machine, but it also mandates that you become mentally tough. You can’t fake this part – I know this for a fact, as I watched my oldest son work through some knee-deep shit for several years when it came to the mental portion of wrestling. If you are wrestling, you are showing up early, staying late, managing your weight, your schoolwork, your life, all while holding yourself accountable by making it to every practice and not crying into an entire quart of ice cream when you get home. Unless you are a heavyweight… then you get a bit more leeway. Ha. Ice cream has too many calories, here are some ice chips. Eat these and pretend you got Dairy Queen.
But one of my favorite things about wrestling is the bond you make with your teammates and other wrestling parents. The bond between teammates who have suffered through the same practices, weight cuts, conditioning, the wins and losses and everything in between is unmatched. These kids push each other, support each other and respect each other, because they know who is putting in the same amount of work they are.
The bond that the parents have is completely unmatched; I have never felt this bond in ANY other sport. I felt like I was part of a cool gang that had some of the best people I have ever met in it; I still love half of them (both kids and adults) to this day, and it’s been a few years since I was one of the “gang members”. There were the parents who you knew had the extra ibuprofen, the others who had the extra snacks, someone always had a charger and there were always other moms who were listening to all the shit talk around them and would jump in and take out an entire gym for any of the kids on your team. I was one of those moms… Don’t let me hear you say a damn thing about one of my kids; whether I gave birth to you or not it does not matter. I would have been on whoever was brave enough to talk shit faster than they knew what was coming. And you know when I was coming, I was the loudest thing in the entire place. I would give you notice… I would be the one telling, pointing and screaming at you to come and say it to me, not one of my kids. Hi, that’s me. Absolutely. Un. Hinged.
Wrestling moms are an entirely different breed of animal. Seasoned veteran or a new recruit, it doesn’t matter. You all start out as a mom putting their kid in a sport that seems real sus and just going to “see how it goes” or “this will teach them discipline” to the lady on their 2nd energy drink at 11am on a Saturday screaming at ear splitting decibels at the ref, your kid, the other kid and beating the shit out of the person sitting next to you while you watch your child try to pull a move they tried only once in practice and now seemed like a great time to try it, when they are down by 2.
Ask me how many times my Apple Watch asked me if I had fallen and needed medical assistance. It was too many times. I am surprised 911 doesn’t have me on a blocked list. I finally left the damn thing in the car.
But those moms always had my back, and I without a doubt would have theirs. We made the most random food because we knew our kids had barely eaten in a week (to hit that magic MF number) and had bribed them with macaroni and cheese on the day of the meet (AFTER weigh ins) because it was said at one point that week “just make weight and I’ll make you whatever you want” and some mac and cheese was the request. We all got up at 4am to roll breakfast burritos, pack snacks for the other kids and our friends, stopped to get an extra energy drink, and even to buy razors at a ghetto gas station in some little weird ass town that you spent $12 on because some dipshit ref thought someone’s sideburns were too long. (To note, they were not too long, the ref was just a dipshit.)
I miss wrestling more than I could possibly tell you. The day my son was taken out in sectional his senior year, I sobbed. Not for the loss… it was never about that. It was going to be the last time I ever watched my kid do the thing he loved. It was the last time I would take a million photos of everyone’s kids and post them so that those kids could see how badass they looked out on that mat. It would be the last time I sat with my mom friends and talked shit. It was just the end, and I was not ready. He was not ready. None of us were ready. But that is what wrestling is… It doesn’t care if you are ready, when it’s over, it’s over. And I don’t know if I would have ever been ready for that moment, because I would never, ever give it up if ever given the choice.
Wrestling isn’t the most popular sport. It is not the flashiest. It does not get even half the spotlight it deserves. But it is the toughest, most honest and one of the most demanding sports there is.
Once you have stepped on that mat, once you have felt the adrenaline from your first win, once you have seen your kid’s arm held in the air after one of the most insane pins you have ever witnessed… You will know. You will get it.
Wrestling is just the best sport; it’s a literal way of life.
