How much!?!?

Posted on 01/31/2009 by RLW3

After my son’s big victory last night, he weighed himself to make sure that he would be under the weight limit for this morning’s weigh in. As is so often the case, what should have been a mere formality turned into another small adventure.

He was 4 pounds overweight!!!

To make matters worse, it was indirectly my fault!

Last weekend, I had found an article written by doctors and wrestling coaches on how to eat and drink during a wrestling tournament. It said that he should drink 8 ounces of Gatorade one hour before his next match and 4 ounces of water 20 minutes before the match.

It worked great at last week’s tournament. However, last week he wrestled one match every three hours. This weekend’s tournament was run so much more efficiently. He wrestled 5 matches in 5 hours.

So, he drank 48 ounces of Gatorade and at least 20 ounces of water in 5 hours!

because I told him to!

So, after cutting two pounds earlier in the day to make the initial weigh in, going to school and then wrestling 5 times in 5 hours, instead of going right to bed when we got home at 11:00 P.M., he put on three layers of sweat clothes and went to the gym to sit in the sauna for more than an hour.

He had to be back at school at 6:00 A.M. this morning.

All that work paid off. He pinned his first two opponents to make it to the finals to where he lost to the reigning Missouri Group 2 state champion by a 12-4 score. He went 7-1 for the tournament. His record for the year is now 31-7.

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A BIG victory

Posted on 01/30/2009 by RLW3

My son has another big tournament this weekend. This one is in Missouri. Missouri is a hotbed for high school wrestling. Kansas schools don’t wrestle across the border very often. Two of the top teams in the state of Missouri were at this tournament.

My son pinned his first four opponents. In the fifth bout of the evening (you read that right!), he faced the third ranked wrestler in Missouri’s Group 4 (the big high schools).

I usually shout encouragement (and a little instruction since I don’t know all that much) to him during the match. However, I was in full throttle yelling mode for this one. It turns out that the other kids parents were sitting two chairs away from me. I am sure that they thought I was one of those maniacal psycho parents. I certainly was acting like one!

I was so nervous…

Well, that’s not quite true. I was nervous and scared. 

I was trying to describe the match to my wife and came up with this. My son is not a good wrestler…yet! He is just really good at wrestling. What do I mean by that?

He has so much to learn. I can see that and I don’t know that much. But, he has such heart. He is tough as nails and he just has a knack for knowing what to do.

It was a thrilling match. There were at least three big scrambles. A scramble is where one kid looks like he has just made a great scoring move only to have it turned around on him and finding himself in trouble when just one moment before it looked like he was in control. Bodies are flying, muscles are rippling as two young men try to force their will on each other. You really have to see one but when you do, I don’t care who you are, you will be shouting!

The other kid was a very good wrestler. As soon as the match began, he was pushing the action. Throughout the match, my son was frequently reacting. Yet, after two periods, he was leading by a 7-5 score!

However, a match lasts 3 two minute periods.

With a minute to go, my son broke free from his opponent’s grasp to gain one point. The score was now 8-5.

He was leading, but it was very obvious that my son was very tired. The kid started pressing the action even more.

Their next tussle tool them out of bounds. My son was so slow walking back to the center of the mat to resume the match that he received a warning for stalling. 

He dove in to grab my son’s legs. He fought him off and the third big scramble was on! When the dust had settled, my son came out with the takedown…

10-5 with 30 seconds left…

My son somehow managed to put the kid on his back to get 3 more points! He beat the #3 wrestler in the state of Missouri by a score of 13-5!

I’m exhausted!

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Father Knows Best

Posted on 01/29/2009 by RLW3

I never really watched this show but I sure do like the title.

My son has a friend who happens to be a girl. He assures me that there is nothing more between them.

Last night, he informed me when I got home that he was going to go the the movies with her and a few friends.

It just so happened that my wife and my youngest daughter wanted to go to the movies also. You can imagine my (really our) surprise when my son started to wriggle like an earthworm on the sidewalk when I suggested that he take them with him!

He kept a great attitude but it was very obvious that the idea was quite a bit below his dream scenario. The more he protested and pleaded, the more delightful the idea became. Finally, I made the decree: if he was going to the movies, he had to take his mother and sister!

Now, just between you and me, I did it just because it was fun to see him squirm. It was really a precious moment. But, as is so often the case, God was secretly at work behind the scenes.

When he went to pick up the girl and their friends, he learned that one of the friends was sick and the other had to study for a test. That meant that it would have been just him and her…

on a DATE!!!

Thankfully, I had already taken the necessary precautions to protect the two of them from any uncomfortable (or should I say too comfortable) situations.

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He’s getting famous

Posted on 01/28/2009 by RLW3

I forgot something very important in my last post about Big A’s wrestling this weekend. His victory in the final was covered by three newspapers: Husky Headlines (the local school paper), Sun Publications and the Sunday edition of the Kansas City Star, the main paper for the city!

Here is a link to their online version of the story. The article in the actual newspaper was much better.

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The smiling champion!

Posted on 01/27/2009 by RLW3

If you have been reading this blog recently, you know that my son won a major wrestling tournament this weekend. The new rankings were released today and Big A is now the fifth rated 160 pounder in the state.

The college coach (NAIA level so he is not bound by NCAA regulations) has already e-mailed him and explained the next steps to take!

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Life in the whirlwind

Posted on 01/26/2009 by RLW3

Things are moving along at a very quick pace.

I picked my children from their after school activities like I usually do. However, while I was waiting for them in the lobby, my youngest daughter’s academic adviser walked in and informed me that she was conducting a meeting on what we needed to do to prepare Cakes for college.

I drove home, dropped the kids off, inhaled a delicious bowl of soup and drove back to the school.

I was about 15 minutes late getting back so I missed most of the academic information. I was just in time to learn what we needed to do if Cakes was planning to compete in collegiate athletics.

The timing could not have been more perfect…

for my son, who is in the last semester of his senior year!

I went home and filled out the necessary documents with the NCAA so coaches can recruit my son legally.

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I asked the right man!

Posted on 01/25/2009 by RLW3

After I printed out the state weight class rankings yesterday morning and saw the caliber of competition, I grew so excited. I wanted to know who was wrestling who so badly that I did something that I have never done: I filled out the brackets as the matches occurred.

That gets to be pretty difficult when you have three matches going on simultaneously!

When my son’s first match came up, I left my bracket sheet on my seat and went down to the mat to shout my encouragement/advice during the match.

After he won, I returned to my seat and turned to ask a man standing on the top bleacher who won the other two matches while I was away. He answered me and then came down to my row and introduced himself.

It turns out that he is a VERY successful high school wrestling coach that has been hired by  a private Methodist university to start a wrestling program next year! He said that he was interested in my son!

I responded that a private school is probably pretty expensive. He said, “$28,000 per year.” He then started explaining a few of the scholarship options that he has at his disposal to offer my son!

My wife and I visited the university this morning since it is only 40 minutes away from our apartment! It is a nice, small campus (4,000 students) with an excellent academic reputation. Fraternity row is on one side and sorority row on the other (keep the boys and girls as far away from each other as possible). So far, everyone that I have spoken to has had nothing but VERY good things to say about the university AND the coach!

10 months ago, I told my son that if he worked hard at wrestling and academics, he had a chance to earn a scholarship. It looks like that just might be happening!

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Champion!

Posted on 01/24/2009 by RLW3

In the middle of the week, I got this feeling that this weekend’s wrestling tournament was important. I had no idea how important. I will tell part one tonight.

I arrived at the school Friday night at 5:00. The parking lot was packed!

Upon entering the gym, I learned that there were 26 schools competing. A few of the schools came from the Wichita area nearly 3 1/2 hours away! 

I was so surprised at the size and scope of the tournament that I ended up printing out a list of the rankings by weight class on Saturday morning. At least four of the state’s top 12 wrestlers in each weight class were competing in this tournament!

Big A won his only match on Friday night. On Saturday morning, he beat the number 12 ranked opponent in the semi-finals pretty easily, pinning him in the third period. Actually, he had the guys shoulders flatter than a pancake for a good five seconds in the second period but the ref refused to call it.

Five hours later, he stepped onto the center mat to wrestle for the championship!

The first period ended in a scoreless tie.

In the second period, Big A lost control of his opponent (1 point) and then was taken down (2 points) to fall behind by a score of 3-0. He then escaped before the end of the period to gain one point.

In the third period, Big A escaped from his opponent’s control for a second point. With 20 seconds to go, he trailed by a score of 3-2. With 1.8 seconds to go, he took his opponent down to win the match by a score of 4-3! The crowd loved it!

I can’t tell you how happy I was for him: to win his first varsity tournament and to win a tournament of this quality all in his home gym!

Part 2 will follow tomorrow.

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“That’s too bad” becomes “That’s great!”

Posted on 01/23/2009 by RLW3

Back in November, my youngest daughter, Cakes, won one of the main parts in the upcoming school play. She has been practicing with the “Blue Star” cast for the past two months. The “Blue Star” cast is a  little like the first string. The performances will be held Feb. 12-14th.

That will be a big weekend here in the Castle. My mother and my wife’s parents are flying in for that weekend. Bean, our oldest daughter, will be driving up from Dallas with her roommate on Friday night. Not only will Cakes be performing in her play but Big A will be wrestling in the league championship tournament! To top it off, we will also celebrate Bean’s 22nd birthday!

However, yesterday, Cakes talked with the teacher who is directing the show and found out that she was going to perform the Wednesday and Friday night shows. The “Blue Star” cast is performing the Thursday and Saturday night shows.

She would normally be fine with that but that would mean that her big sister would not get to see her perform.

I advised her to talk to the teacher to understand his reasoning. It turns out that he gave the other “Irma” the Thursday/Saturday shows because she is a senior. He said that he had no problem if they wanted to switch.

Cakes talked to the other girl playing “Irma” and to her great credit, Hailey was perfectly willing to switch. Now the weekend will once again be perfect!

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Is he ducking Big A?

Posted on 01/22/2009 by RLW3

It is getting to the fun time of the wrestling season. The league championship is just a few weeks away.

Last night, my son’s school was facing the school of the kid who beat him in the finals of the Johnson County tournament just one month ago. Big A has been looking forward to a rematch ever since the whistle blew the last time.

But things have changed. Although the kid is the number two rated 160 pounder in the state of Kansas, he has decided to drop down to 152. I wonder if that last match had anything to do with it. Big A was not happy to learn that they wouldn’t be wrestling.

He was especially excited when his teammate at 152 lbs. lost to the guy in overtime, 4-2!

Anyway, he went out and wrestled his best match in weeks and pinned his opponent in the 30 seconds into the 2nd period.

Next up, the Husky invitational…26 schools competing in tournament fashion starting tomorrow.

Yahooo!

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