Day 32 – I loved wrestling…part 1

Before I get too far down the line, let me jump back into high school for a moment and tell you about my short but “no-so-bad” wrestling career.

I did a lot of sports during my freshman and sophomore years at Rose High School, just to get out of the house and away from Daddy. But after he left, I did things I loved…mostly football. I wish we could have had a weight room, but that really wasn’t a “thing” back them.

Today, our football players start serious lifting in January and continue until the season starts in August and even then, we modify lifting for the “in-season”. Some of our kids, especially my linemen, as their young man hormones kick in, will gain 30 lbs. in one-year lifting, mostly muscle and it’s great.

If you remember me telling you about my junior year in football, when I was overweight and out of shape, well, when the season was over, I started to lose weight. Coach Bud, my football coach, was now the wrestling coach and asked me to come out right at the end of the season. I had lost enough weight that I could fit into the 195 class. I couldn’t make 187 and heavy weight was out of the question…those guys are BIG…so 195 was perfect. They have a 220 lbs. class now, but not back then.

When I was younger, my friend Jim Winslow and his twin brother Tim, used to wrestle for hours. Nothing like official wrestling in school, just roughhousing and having fun. But I had never thought about it as a sport until Coach Bud asked me.

It was hard work, exhausting in fact, with many new rules and moves to learn, but I absolutely loved it. I have to admit that sometimes in football I would pace myself just to be able to make it through practice, but in wrestling, I went all-out until I collapsed on the mat and couldn’t be happier, never holding back and it was so much fun.

When I came back my senior year I was in shape and ready to go…remember a lean, mean, fighting machine. I mostly wrestled our heavy-weight guy, Russ, which helped me with strength, but sometimes I worked with the class below me to work on speed and quickness. I was learning every day and loved it.

There was only ONE problem with wrestling. That happens right before your match. When the class below you is wrestling on the mat, you go to the warmup mat and your opponent goes to his warmup mat. A match lasts for 6 minutes in high school. First period standing up for 2 minutes, the second period you start on the mat either in the top or bottom position for 2 minutes, then they reverse it for the last period of 2 minutes.

During those 6 minutes before the match, I’m on my warmup mat trying to get loose, looking at my opponent and dreading it all. Once the match starts, no problem, you just go for it, but the wait was torturous.

I used to take Vicks Vapor Rub and put it all over the inside of my mouth and on my gums. Why? In wrestling, you can get “cotton mouth” very quickly. That means your mouth is so dry you can’t even swallow, your tongue literally sticks to the roof of your mouth. The Vicks kept my mouth moist, at least through the first 2 rounds and that was helpful.

Wrestling is a very intimate sport, you are grabbing, and grinding on each other the whole time. You wear a skintight uniform and not really much of that, so I was a little baffled years later when I heard that some girls were allowed to wrestle on the boy’s team…thank god I didn’t have to contend with that situation.

I went 14-1 in the conference that senior year. Tied for the conference championship, got 2nd in the Regionals, and went to the state tournament. I’ll tell you more about that tomorrow as well as an interesting cultural phenomenon that was going on at the time.