7 Things Sports —and Wrestling—Taught My Sons That I Could Not

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michele-weldon/7-things-sports-and-wrest_b_8093464.html

Here is a short list of what I feel my sons learned from their years of youth and high school wrestling. [...]

1. Be on time. For years I set the clocks in our house up to 30 minutes ahead so we would not be late for school, practice, family parties or even the movies. I was always shouting, “Hurry up!” But it wasn’t until they each had a coach they respected who said over and over, “If you’re on time, you are five minutes late,” that they internalized the responsibility they had to themselves and to others for being prompt. Arriving late to practice would sometimes mean extra push-ups or laps. But arriving after the appointed 6 a.m. meet-up at the school would mean the team bus would leave without them, they would miss weigh-ins for the tournament and the chance to compete. It would also mean they may get kicked off the team.

2. There can be dignity in loss. Very few athletes win every time they compete. In wrestling, even if a wrestler was undefeated in his -and sometimes her—total record of matches, opponents would score at least some of the time in those matches. The rules are that each winner—and loser—shakes the hand of the opponent as well as the coach of the opposing team. If an athlete storms off, throws down headgear in a huff or gloats ungraciously after a win, a referee could dock points from the team for bad sportsmanship. It’s best to be humble.

3. Be involved in something bigger than yourself. Coach Powell said this repeatedly, and it translates to the critical life notion that an individual’s actions impact the whole group. I have learned that the default state of most teens is selfishness—not out of any premeditation, but out of natural cognitive and social development. Knowing you represent not only yourself, but a team, school, state —or a country— can influence your actions for the better.

4. Get used to an audience watching. Wrestling is an intense individual sport with one on one direct contact played out on a mat in a gym with an audience of parents, coaches, referees, teammates, friends and strangers able to see your every move and reaction. Yes, you can say all sports attract the gaze of many eyes on one athlete. But in wrestling, you are alone facing another person whose goal is to dominate you physically and directly. There is no hiding. And how you handle that confrontation is there for everyone to see.

5. Take care of your body. Maintaining weight in season often means foregoing an average teen diet and watching precisely what you eat and drink, knowing that if you do not “make weight” in your weight class on the day of the tournament or the night before, your team will forfeit your weight category. Being conscious of the role of diet in health is acute in wrestling and important in all sports and can impact health behaviors that last a lifetime.

6. Pay attention. You can argue that all sports require intense focus and mental acuity. But with the relentless ticking of a clock in three two-minute periods in wrestling, where any move in any second can change the outcome, it is critical to be alert at all times. You have to not only anticipate the opponent’s strategy, you have to pre-empt and react to a constant changing choreography.

7. You earn points by getting out of a hold. This might be the most important lesson of all. You can wrack up points—escape points—by freeing yourself from the hold of your opponent. There is reward and acknowledgment that you prevailed by extricating yourself from a bad situation. You can win by escape points alone; it’s a metaphor for life.

Michele Weldon is a journalist, author and emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University. Her most recent book, Escape Points: A Memoir is about raising her sons as a single working mother facing cancer.
Follow Michele Weldon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/micheleweldon