Shane and I were out the door by 7:30 AM for the first annual end of season tournament in our area. A couple of my wrestling parents put it together. It was the same day as the state middle/elementary tournament. Hopefully, that meant the talent pool would be at the 'learning' level locally.
Our first stop was doughnuts and coffee for the concession stand.
Ryan showed up at the high school shortly after Shane and I.
They weren't much help setting up.
Sure looks like they had a lot of fun, though.
It left the rest of us free to take care of business.
I normally let Shane roam independently at tournaments. It helps that there are mats everywhere and people recognize him as mine.
I found them with one of the other coach's sons, Bruce, who had a device. Ryan and Shane weren't happy when I checked in and told them to go warm up!
The tournament was staggered so that elementary kids started at 9 AM and middle school kids started at 11: AM.
Nana and Pop arrived in time for the start! They helped keep an eye on Shane (and provide Pokemon Go and encouragement) while I played loudspeaker.
Carrie came a little after, but I don't have a picture of her. She stayed through Shane's first match and then went home to work.
Shane's warm-ups weren't the most effective. I tried to work on a switch and a baby-crawl + switch a couple of nights to up his game from Tuesday. He mainly flopped around.
When he wasn't flopping, he was part of the dog-pile! I want him to have fun at these meets, so I just laughed and focused on what I needed to do.
I was able to coach him since my kids hadn't arrived yet, though. Shane improved a lot after his first real matches, so I hoped to see more improvement. What I really wanted was for Shane to get his first win in front of Pop.
We had to find our wins somewhere other than the final score.
Shane tried to be a little aggressive in the first match, but ended on his back with his feet in the air and probably humming.
I coached him a little bit on the three questions and told him what I wanted him to focus on in his next match.
Ryan was Shane's opponent for Round 2. Shane scored a point and stayed alive the whole time!
He's trying to shoot. That's a plus. He needs to work on having an escape or reversal from bottom. If he could learn how to stop a switch, that'd be a big help, too.
Shane's final match was a little strange. Ryan wrestled a tough match right before. Ryan got frustrated when the other wrestler had a good move and started to cry. He continued to cry and wrestle, tears streaming down. The other wrestler started to cry in the third period, too! Everyone congratulated them when they wrestled through to the end. Ryan, red-faced, won.
So Shane cried in his next match. He's never cried in a match before. The timing had to be more than coincidence.
Part of the goal of wrestling is to teach toughness, so I'm happy he didn't quit. He went 0 - 3 for the day. Shane was ready to be done. I wonder if he would have been eager for more had he won a match.
Random: Sitting and waiting are difficult for Shane.
But everything is padded!
And if your friend tackles you, it's almost like drilling. Almost.
As long as the boys stayed out of the way of matches and anyone else I didn't care.
My wrestlers started to show up around 10:20 AM.
Which meant they got to beat up and play with Shane some! Nana and Pop left for lunch with Peggy Lowry. Shane had a blast running around and playing with all of the other wrestlers young and older.
My boys did pretty well. There was one boy who fell victim to the brackets (and I wished I'd noticed earlier), but everyone else found some successes. It was a successful season despite some of the bumps in the road.
Clean-up was the biggest workout for me. Chris, one of the organizers, had the idea to re-purpose some of the pads to replace the decrepit black pads on the walls. I joked that all the blue meant that the wrestling room clearly belonged to the middle school! Blue is our color while the high school is orange and black.
It was a successful day! The snack stand earned enough money to pay off most of the end of year party next week.
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