Wrestling

7 Pages 1689 Words

I’ve always been told that baseball was my sport. I love baseball and always will. It wasn’t
until my freshman year of high school that I realized I had a new passion. This was to my surprise
and the surprise of all my friends.
My school had decided to start up a wrestling team. Everybody laughed and made fun of the
idea because who would want to roll around in spandex with other guys? This was my thinking as
well. I didn’t want any part of it.
Then one day at school the wrestling coach asked me if I was interested in joining the team. I was a small guy and the wrestling team could use some light weights. As much as I wanted to say no, I told him I’d give it a try. I guess I felt bad for him. “Great!” he said, “Come by my office after school and I’ll tell you a little more about it.” The only thing running through my mind at this time was, “What did I get myself into?”
School let out so I stopped by his office. He explained to me that wrestling is one of the most physically demanding sports in the world. He said, “Two minutes of wrestling will feel like you have been running wind sprints for two hours. Now I’m warning you, you have to be very tough to compete in this sport. Are you a tough kid?” Of course I couldn’t back down now. He conned me into this. He knew exactly what he was doing and it worked. Coach Shone was a very intimidating man. He was a four-time high school wrestling state champion in New York. He then was a two-time collegiate national champion when he wrestled at West Point. To top it all off he went on to place fifth in the Olympic trials in 1996. Like I said he was intimidating. I didn’t want to disappoint him so I told him I’d start coming to some practices and try it out.
At the first practice I didn’t get to wrestle. Instead, he took the whole wrestling team into his classroom to watch videos of several different college, and Olympic wrestling matches. I was am...