Wrestling - The Parents Worst Fear
The average parent might be a little worried when her son says he wants to join the wrestling team. Wrestling is not what one would call the average contact sport. A wrestling match is a test of strength, speed, agility, endurance and above all, the ability to combine these things. Getting hurt is not difficult if the wrestlers do not know what they are doing. While gaining strength, speed, agility and the ability to endure intense exertion of energy for up to seven and a half minutes without stopping is no walk in the park, it is not the hardest part of being a member of a good wrestling team. Achieving family status with perfect strangers is often times the most difficult part of achieving a strong, functional, winning team. Wrestlers compete individually to earn points for their team and it hurts the team when a wrestler forgets that his victory is the team’s victory just as his loss is the team’s loss. As for any sort of team, a wrestling team is only as strong as its weakest link.
The first year I managed the wrestling team at Amherst Regional High School, I felt I could practically play two-square on the line between upperclassmen and underclassmen. The Captain rarely spoke to anyone outside of a match or practice, not even on the bus on the way to a match. The other senior on the team hated every last one of his teammates and let them know. He was a good wrestler, but when it came to helping anyone else, he thought it was a waste of time. He put a damper on the overall attitude of the team, which was never in high spirits anyway because we had to forfeit at least three weight classes (18 points) every match. We had a bunch of guys who liked to throw each other around with some skill, but most of them being underclassmen had limited skill. I would not have even called them a team that year. They had barely achieved tolerance of one another.
As our parents tell us more frequently than we care to hear it, we must learn from our mistakes. The next year the boys tore down the shack they had built themselves into and proceeded to start on the foundation of the powerhouse they are now. Everything starts with the foundation. If there is not a good foundation, the house will crumble as if through a sinkhole. In the past four years, the record for the ARHS wrestling team has ebbed and flowed. They have gone from not even winning half of their matches to a 16-3 (15-2 not counting non-division teams) record.
A tricky part of being team captain and maintaining such a strong foundation is making sure the new comers feel welcome and are brought up to speed quickly. Sometimes freshman come up through the middle school program knowing the basic skills and [next page]