It began

Finally wrestling began! It's been a long wait for some live action.

Going into today I didn't know what to expect. Our son's growth spurt has put him into the

same weight class as one of our best wrestlers. As I've said before, high school wrestling is organised in such a way that only one wrestler in each weight class gets to represent their school and probably that isn't going to be our son this season (barring injuries or some other unexpected event). So it was possible that our son could go the whole season without a chance to wrestle.

Sorry for the poor iPhone photos. Due to a miscommunication,
we only took the video camera, not the camera.

Therefore it was something of a surprise today to find that both of the schools who came to CAJ to wrestle also had "spare" wrestlers in that weight class. After the main competition they held what are called "exhibition bouts". The bouts not counting towards the schools' scores, but certainly giving the wrestlers needed experience and a lot of pleasure to the spectators. 

Our son pinned both his opponents. He made plenty of mistakes, but as usual it was great to watch him. The second bout, particularly, was enthralling. One of those bad-turned-good stories. It looked like our son was going to lose fairly easily, and then he turned it around and ended up winning.

I'm now recovering from a strained throat: I let loose and yelled! But I wasn't alone, there were plenty of yellers, including the high school principal. I think at least one of the colleagues of my mild-mannered-maths-teacher-husband was surprised to see the loud-sports-loving-Australian come out in him.

This is the first time our son has wrestled at CAJ, so it was great to have some home support. Also, the high school team is much larger than the middle school team, so it was fantastic to have lots of other CAJ "wrestling parents" there with us. 

Now we look forward to two more meets in the next 10 days before a break over Christmas. I guess we'll go into each one with the same "not knowing" whether we'll see our son wrestle that day or not. The suspense is going to be interesting!