I spent Friday afternoon and nearly all day Saturday attending my son’s wrestling tournament. All of the schools in Johnson County meet to determine the county champion. There were more wrestlers (although not the same in quality) in this tournament than will be in the State tournament next February.
My son was seeded 2nd in his weight class out of 20 wrestlers! The top seed finished fourth in the State tournament last year as a Junior and is undefeated this year.
Big A started the tournament by winning his first five matches, 4 of them by pinning his opponent’s shoulders to the mat. When he got his fifth pin in the semi-finals, one of Big A’s teammates heard some of the fans from the top seeded guy’s school murmuring “Who is this guy?”
In the final, he faced the top seed. The first and last time Big A wrestled him was in the Regional finals in February shortly after he made the Varsity team. The match ended in the middle of the second period as he lost 17-2 and was proud of the fact that he didn’t get pinned!
This time was a different story. He lost 9-5.
There was a critical moment in the match where his opponent was just about to break out of his grasp and put him in real trouble. So what did my son do?
He slowly climbed up off of his knees and picked the guy 2-3 feet off of the mat with one arm while fighting the guys counter attack off with the other!!!! The crowd was almost in disbelief over what it was seeing! “Hey, what is he doing? Does he realize who he is picking up? Doesn’t he know that this is supposed to be an easy match?” It was so exciting!
Anyway, he is now 14-5 and people are starting to know his name.
On the other hand, I am really trying hard to not get into the “THAT’S MY BOY!!!” syndrome but it is getting very difficult!
I have butterflies! AHHHH!