From The Archives :
I’d been bringing my grandma to her chemo appointments ;
In the lobby was a woman, wearing a knit hat, unnecessary for the weather (SoCal)…she was in chemo, probably about 40.
She and the woman she was with were talking about the son of the former, the woman with cancer.
He was a high school freshman, and he’d just signed up to wrestle at the school I would’ve went to (getting bussed in) had we stayed in our last place in Cali.
Rough place to go, at least it was when I was younger, people stressed to my parents to get me out of that district…they did… to New England.
I’ve heard that the district improved since then, and boots on the ground the area seemed low crime, decent enough at present. Got the feeling the area was okay buying groceries for grandma at a bunch of places around, sometimes on foot from the old folks home. (It’s Cali there’s a shit ton of stuff around.)
For perspective the school is real close to the old folks home my grandma was put in. So something like four weekdays and once on the weekend I’d drive by there, plus I’d be running her errands for her at any of 5+ grocery stores within a mile radius.
Back to story :
He’d never wrestled before, had been doing bjj, which may or may not help, and obviously was undersized, going for something like the 112 weight class.
The mom with cancer was stressing HIS possibility of getting hurt.
I could hear the conversation, figured I could improve her day, and alleviate those concerns.
Everyone who has wrestled will talk up the sport whenever possible.
This was an opportunity to do so with a worried parent. I politely interrupted, said that I used to wrestle, answered their questions about the sport, and wished her son good luck.
(Of note they always ask which school you wrestled at, and being in Cali, I didn’t wrestle on that coast. On one of those grocery runs I spotted a tat on short bodybuilder type that marked him as having wrestled at the olympic training center. He too asked, as I always leave that detail out since where I had is 3000 miles away. If you see a dude with the USA Wrestling logo tatted on him, it’s 3/3 in my experience that he has been to the otc.)
We parted ways them smiling, the woman no longer visibly concerned about her son wrestling.
You should know that there is something of a wrestling community. I’d personally jump at the chance to coach for, resurrecting, a local high school’s program.
(And I almost coached middle school when a cousin was going to join up, he quit before the athletic director ran my background check to fully approve me, and I didn’t follow through with doing it. I was 18, and at the time only was only willing to answer to my old team captain who was head coach to help out my cousin.)
One can not wrestle without it building you up.
I think this is why so many who wrestled give back to the sport.
Many men were positively impacted by it, therefore we try to steer as many youth towards it as possible.
(The local high school I’d like to revive, I was steering this strong ass football player that I knew from the gym to do so. Showed him how to bridge. He didn’t end up wrestling, finding pot instead.)
I remember sitting through school while sick, purely so I could go to practice and wrestle at the meet the next day.
Endless running, fasting, live, the one time where making weight required doing layered up burpees under the locker room heat vent during the home stretch before the bus arrived, kicking a door open that day when my opponent flopped, just gave up on the mat having been better than me a year prior.
It’s the realest sport.
Every winter I miss the mat, and I wasn’t even on it that long.
I found the above track right after highschool. Corny but cool.