Quick report on yesterday's wrestling marathon

Yesterday we left at 6.30am (the wrestlers left at 5.15) to go to a full day of wrestling. David drove the team and I went with friends and our two younger boys. 

Weigh-in was no problem, thankfully, and wrestling got under way some time after 9.30. 

This was one of the best scenes of the day. Our team quietly
huddling in the corner praying, at the conclusion of the event.

Then the day went past pretty quickly. About eight hours of wrestling. Ten teams, three mats, something like 100+ wrestlers! 

The format was duals between schools. So two teams would wrestle off against one another starting generally in the lower weight classes and progressing through to the biggest wrestlers. 

Just before his second pin of the day. These two will see each other again,
this guy in red will be one of our son's toughest competitors this season,
I think. His school also won the competition overall yesterday. Next
time they meet we'll be in his home territory.

Each dual took somewhere about an hour, depending on how many weight classes the teams could fill (I don't think any team had someone on all the weight classes, very often the lowest (101 & 108 pounds or ?) and highest weight classes (215 & 275 pounds or ) were empty. 

After each team wrestled each of the other four teams in their pool the officials determined what order the schools were in and then the teams wrestled off with the team in the other pool at the same ranking for 1&2, 3&4 etc. 

Another one of the pins, I can't remember which one...

Our school got 7th overall as a team. Our son wrestled well and won each of his five bouts with pins. Very exciting to watch, even the heart-stopping one that went for 5 min 55 sec (five sec short of the final whistle). He was also named the Outstanding Wrester of the meet. Not something we expected at a meet with so many wrestlers!

We got home after 7.30pm. 
Phew: long, but fun day. I felt well and energized all day, something else I didn't expect with the exhaustion and headache I had the day before. I think it was probably the adrenaline. I'm a bit tired today but not too bad (though I have had a quiet afternoon). Maybe tomorrow it will hit?