The Life of Wrestling

I can do two things when I wake up: Get better, or get worse. Every morning when I wake up you should think to myself, how am I going to win the day? How am I going to get better? What will I do to reach the next level, achieve my next goal? As a wrestler my brain is wired to think like this. I am built a little differently, think and act a little differently. It’s how wrestlers are. Wrestling is a very isolating road if aiming for the top. Wrestlers have to be a little crazy to want to do it.
Off season is when I get better, stronger, learn new things. The actual season is when I fine tune my skills. Champions are made with the 9 months I have to get better. My teammates become my best friends, my brothers, I consider them a second family. I travel with them every weekend to any tournament we can find. Everyday someone is texting me or I am texting someone to work out, to run, to go wrestle. My coaches are on speed dial because I am asking them to open the wrestling room constantly.
It’s a big sacrifice to want to be successful in the sport of wrestling. There are few select kids who put in the countless hours of training, that’s what makes the sport great. I am in a very select group above everyone else. I walk with confidence wherever I go, yet learn to be humble and modest. I treat everything in life like wrestling and know there’s no way I won’t come out on top. Even when I have faced failure I will not succeed, when I lose in a match I am able to not get angry, yet think about what I did wrong and fix the problem. My junior year in wrestling I wrestled a kid from Richland four times in the year. We wrestled in our duel and I lost, at the district tournament I lost to him again in the finals, at the regional tournament I lost to him in the finals in overtime. I kept making simple mistakes that I could fix. After losing to him three times in a row there was no way I was going to allow myself to be defeated once again. The week before state I trained like a madman knowing I would see him again. At the state tournament we wrestled and I beat him in overtime four to three. My mind is wired to never accept just okay or almost. I will come back more prepared and more ready to tackle the situation.
Being successful in wrestling and being successful in life are parallel to one another. A wrestler’s mentality is a never give up, never back down attitude. Wrestling helped me with situations I have faced in my high school life. Learning how to face adversity the right way came through wrestling. Learning how to live as the oldest in the household and be an example came from wrestling. Being a person someone can trust and count on was something no one would say about me before I started wrestling.
Seeing my coaches be leaders and lead through example over and over helped me see what it takes to be trustworthy and honest. Seeing the leadership from our captains when I was a freshman showed me what it takes to be a great leader. My freshmen year I would never of even thought I would be a captain or a leader.
As the years progressed and I got more into wrestling, I started to see myself as a leader, I started to have a voice, people started to look up to me and by my senior year I was the captain of the team along with my friends who have been with me since freshman year. Wrestling taught me how to be in charge and how to take responsibility for a whole group of peers. Me becoming a leader was achieving and a big coming of age experience for me. It helped me grow as a person and it really does make me feel like a young man and adult who can be taken seriously. Helping others become leaders is even more rewarding, and really does make me feel like I’m doing something with my life.