First Pee-Wee Wrestling Practice 2016

Shane's wrestling season has begun! We arrived early and played outside.

Practice started with running. Shane's good at that.

So good, that he didn't want to do any cartwheels, rolls, or anything else. He ran more.

He also cut across the inside of the circle to feel like he was winning and flopped down on his back in the middle of the runway several times and said he was too tired. The coach asked him to do rolls and Shane declined.

I almost died.

I'm not the coach, though, so I held my tongue (barely).

The coaches are both new, but they look and carry themselves like ex-college wrestlers. I wish I was that built (but without the time and effort - priorities!). He got Shane to do a decent drop step.

Shane, my little attention hound, eventually decided he'd rather stand NEXT to the coach to drill. He walked right up in front of everyone, faced the crowd, and took his place at the coach's right hand. Coach didn't say anything. Either he has a sense of humor and he's going to love Shane, or Shane's going to have to readjust his boundaries!

Shane got his game face on when found his partner.

They practiced their double leg takedown.

Shane goofed off, caused his friend to trip, and ended up like this, milking it. I ignored him until he walked across the mat to complain to me. His partner found someone new to work with after Shane's absence lengthened.

I coaxed Shane back out to try stand-ups.

It started well.

Then Shane remembered he had a bandaid on his knee from the weekend.

Oh, the agony!

He couldn't bear to sit up when coach was talking either!

Warm-up and skills lasted about 45-50 minutes. The final part was reserved for a game (Excellent!). Coach introduced "Dogs!"

I should have learned the lesson from soccer: Let Shane do whatever and either the coach or the kids will correct. I figured Shane didn't know the rules since he flipped and flopped around on his belly when coach explained them.

Overall practice score: D+
I'm probably hyper-sensitive because I coach, but Shane flopped around and carried on enough to make me grate my teeth. However, he did participate some and he seemed to remember the drop step from last year. He didn't fight going to practice and despite all the drama Shane was happy when I told him I liked his drop step when we left (Partly, because he got another pink day at school and wanted video games when he got home! I hope some of the smile was wrestling related).

Soccer started off rough and got better. I think wrestling will, too.