Wrestling Scrimmage

We had our first scrimmage of the season today. We started to unroll mats at 4 PM. MHS has two mats up on hoists for storage. A key lowers the tarp holding the mats and then they can be rolled to wherever they go. That's a far cry fancier than what we had at CHS. 

I've been a little nostalgic about 'the old' team. David posted up a picture of practice and I did my best to identify as many familiar faces as possible. Tony texted me to let me know that at least six kids who wrestled for me in middle school are on the team this year. 

I need to get out to a holiday practice to say hi.

But back to the current team.

We're a small, new crew and the head coach, Rick, didn't think a meet with 7 other teams would be beneficial. He talked with the AD and whittled it down to 4 teams and decided to have an extra large practice. Some of our kids have only had 1 practice! (They came out after not making the basketball team).

Here was the plan: There would be refs, a timer, and official matches in the actual wrestling room. In the gym, there would be two mats and a ton of kids doing a ton of live wrestling and drills with wrestlers from multiple teams.

Beyond that, it was largely unorganized. The mats went down and then there was no set start time, schedule, or what have you. I helped with taping down the mats when Rick was sure they'd shift (and slipped on my butt, but no one was watching). Then there was a lot of hurry up and wait with some errands accomplished in between.

We started late and Rick had something like 80 kids running in a pseudo-practice. The problem was no one could hear him. There was no PA system and Rick's voice doesn't match up to his expertise.

Somehow, it morphed into me becoming the PA and running the last hour of the show. I'm loud. Rick gave me a whistle, too. I yelled out number rotations, water breaks, and whatever I felt like. We did three full rotations with 4 man groups to represent three periods. Then we played some games to finish practice: tilt'em, Russian soccer, Russian soccer + tilt'em, and Toe-Touch-FFA. I somehow ended up reffing, too.  Whenever there was a dead ball I blew a whistle to prevent injuries in the dog pile and I turned one mat into "hot lava" to condense the pack whenever enough people were eliminated in toe-touch. 

Carrie surprised me by showing up with Shane part way through! She'd picked him up from school and they wanted to see what I was up to.....though Shane mainly sat on Carrie's phone. He may not have even realized there was wrestling going on. They left after a little bit, but I was happy to see them.

Our team bled away as the night went on and the activity bus rolled away. I didn't want to be stuck trying to roll mats with all of two helpers, so I press-ganged kids from other teams. They helped gladly and we got most of the work done before everyone left. Then, it was Rick, a handful of kids, and myself rolling things back into place.

I was able to get home around 8:30 PM. There was a, "You need to talk to your son," look when I got home, but that's a different story.

Despite the slow start, it was a good first event. I hope we get more wrestlers and I hope I get to see my old team at a future event soon.