JV Regionals Wrestling

Shane was not happy when I woke him up Saturday morning.

His tune changed when he realized what was going on. Shane rode the school bus with the wrestling team to our match! All was forgiven.

Saturday was the JV Regional Wrestling tournament.

The tournament was scheduled a week ago, but it was cancelled by the threat of snow. There was no inclement weather this weekend, but the power went out.

No main lights. No heating in the main gym.

Without flash under an emergency light.

With flash.

Shane was a complete stinker. He did not understand why we had to stay with the team. He wanted to run around. He tested me every five seconds and told me "You're not making me happy!" whenever I curtailed his wanderlust.

I made him wait to get on the mats until our wrestlers started to warm-up.

Shane showed more energy than all of them. He ran laps. When he got tired of laps, he tackled wrestlers. Any wrestler. It didn't matter what team they were on. I coached him to only go for wrestlers with the big cat logo, but then he ran and jumped on the back of another coach's leg. He had a ball! 

Shane also loved the bleachers. The only place he wanted to sit was the tippity top. Nothing else would do.

However, there was not much of this.

There was more of this.

When the wrestling started, I picked a kid, shoved Shane at him, and said, "Don't let him get away." One of the smarter wrestlers forked over a phone. Shane played Angry Birds for the next hour. The only time he moved was to ask a wrestler for help or a new phone.

Eventually, Carrie came and picked him up. The kid wore me out! I didn't get any rest until I delegated my spawn away (it's good to be the coach).

I got to go on a different emotional roller-coaster as my wrestlers hit the mats. Some belly side up. Two of our 12 kids survived through the brackets. One got 1st and the other got 2nd! We did all right overall. There were some heartbreaks. The refs ran the clocks in continuous 1 minute periods. Several of our kids were casualties of the clocks. They lost matches I felt they could have won. One kid knocked his opponent out of bounds repeatedly and the resets killed the clock and his chances. Another kid won a match crawling out of bounds that he probably should have lost, so it evened out somewhat. I would have rather seen the desperate shot win than a stall.

Our last JV dual is Wednesday. Varsity starts their post-season Friday. It's all coming to a head.