Solo Week: Wrestling (The Stretch!)

It was a wrestling filled week. To Kila's dismay, I ran practices instead of coming home early and we had two matches. 

Wednesday, I rushed home after school to let her out some before I drove all the way back to CHS in town (~50 minutes round trip).

Three good teams faced off against us: Orange, Louisa, and CHS. Predictably, we lost. A lot.

There were signs of improvement, though. We lost to CHS 66-9 for the season opener. Today, we lost 55-17! At least three of those were forfeits. We don't have anyone lighter than 126 lbs. The kids are almost all inexperienced, too, so we have to look for moral victories more often than match victories. Today, we (mostly) remembered to tie our shoes and wear our headgears. 

Our most experienced wrestler, we'll call him Bob, started to practice this week. He had three matches, so he's had more matches than practices! He wrestled well, but his opponents were tough and he had zero stamina. With practice, he may have won all three. 

We had four coaches present, so I decided to be videographer. Brian, Rodrigues, and DaVell were able to yell more than enough for our wrestlers to hear! The quality of the refs seemed down this year. Brian and Ricus got deducted a team point questioning a bad call. Brian said it was "inspirational" to fire up the team!  Brian got some justification later when he had his referee brother look at my video later. 

We didn't win any of the team matches, but it felt like we had built up a little momentum going into Saturday when we had a team tournament at CHS (deja vu!). There were 12 teams split into groups of 3. Each group took to a mat and battled each other there. Everyone would be assigned into tiers based on how they did in their grouping (Winning teams vs winning teams, etc).

I was doing horse chores while everyone was travelling and weighing in. I arrived one bout into the first match....and promptly caught a flying headgear. The experienced wrestler I mentioned earlier? Bob's a hothead. He'd just lost a close match. He held it in until after shaking hands with his opponent and was almost off the mat when he did an underhand throw.

And that's just the preamble.

The ref didn't see it or chose not to comment. Bob stewed in his chair until his headphones offended him. Those got slammed into the ground later. They bounced, but held together and it's a good thing, too. They were an expensive brand.

Bob gave a repeat performance after his second match. He lost on points to a state runner up, held it together until the last step off the mat, and then tried to destroy his headgear and headphones.

The third (or 4th?) match, Bob should have won. He was clearly the better wrestler. The other wrestler stalled, asked for injury time, and was passive except for one lucky move when Bob rode too high. Bob lost by a point. This time, Bob had a friend looking out for him. His friend saw the oncoming storm and hid Bob's personal effects to protect them.

So Bob went out in the hallway and broke his hand instead. Unless you're Superman, the wall's going to win every time.

That ended Bob's wrestling season. 

There was some question if he was going to make it through the year, but was making it through a week too much to ask for? 

Later, Brian found out that the "worthless pair of volunteers at the table" were Bob's ex and her new bf. They'd come to watch. I noticed them, because they sat hugging instead of helping whenever something needed to be done. Brian said he'd noticed them in the stands at our previous matches, as well. Bob said they weren't why he exploded, but showing up to your ex's meets to PDA your new catch couldn't have helped.

And yet, we won the Sportsmanship Award for the day.

I cannot make this up.

It probably stemmed from the best story of the day (and maybe the season!).

We have one wrestler on the team we'll call Jay. Jay didn't seem like he wanted to wrestle. Sure, he showed up to practice with his friends, but he managed to be sick or hurt constantly. Especially if we were ever about to do anything live. We'd turn around and Jay was gone. We'd find him at the trainers (and they'd give us evil eyes like we were abusive until they clued in on his pattern!).

Saturday, Jay said he felt sick. He weighed in, but he didn't wrestle in our first two matches. Nobody made him. We forfeited his weight class.

We lost our first two team matches and got put in the loser's bracket. Jay seemed healthy. He was laughing and joking around on the side of the mat. Brian pointed out one of the most unintimidating kids imaginable on the other team and said, "Look! That's who you'll wrestle." Jay's friends urged him on and Jay decided he would wrestle. 

He was about to clip his headgear when his real opponent stood up. He'd been sitting down behind the cream puff Brian pointed out. This guy was intimidating. He was the only one on the entire team to have muscles and they were cut. 

Jay froze. He started to undo his headgear when one of his friends snapped it for him and said, "Too late! Get out there!" Jay got pushed out onto the mat. He walked stiff legged like a deer worried about headlights.

I knew the ref. I'd coached his youngest son in middle school. We chatted before the match. It was his first year as a ref. He knew the sport, but reffing is a different skill set.

During the match, Jay was clearly outmatched. He made it through the first period, though. He was down in the second when his opponent locked hands. The ref signaled, but allowed the match to continue. We all started yelling, "Free move! Free move!" 

Normally, when the person on top is called for locking hands. The ref waits a moment to let everyone's momentum play out. If the top person uses the locked hands to obtain a dominant position, the match is stopped and the bottom wrestler receives a penalty point. If the bottom wrestler breaks out and scores despite the locked hands, the match continues and they get the penalty point.

Jay got pinned. The ref never stopped the match or awarded the penalty point.

Brian signaled for a conference at the table and brought it up gently. The ref realized his mistake, restarted the match, and Jay had the honor of being pinned a second time. Two losses, one match! And it was his first! (Thanks, Coach!).

We all had a good laugh about that later. Jay was fine. No injuries! He was a good sport about it.

Maybe that's what got us the trophy. It became a running joke for the rest of the season.

While we lost the first two matches, we did well in the loser's bracket. We got our first team win in several years vs Amelia (Ryan's old HS!).  Against other teams of similar experience, we won more than we lost. Kids got wins.

I took tons of videos of the matches, but I uploaded them to my work computer. So after all that writing, I just have a few pictures. Like this picture of Disha looking impatient trading roster information.

I still have this picture of Brian's missing bag, too! We had to track it down after the last match.

Kila went nuts when I got home. I was gone from something like 9 AM - 3:30 PM. No accidents! She's been unhappy with being locked up all day with Carrie and Shane out of town....but that's over! They got back Saturday night!