Last week I wrote that hoped this week would be better, especially that I could get some traction on my work. I'm pleased to say that that has indeed been the case. I'm on my fourth straight day without any meetings or other external distractions and I'm also in good health, which is a great help.
There's no avoiding it: this is going to be a "wrestling" post. But if you keep reading, you'll find out why we're so interested in wrestling and how we got into the sport initially. If you were following my blog back in 2015–2017 you would have seen a lot of these during this time of year. Feb 2017 was really a pinnacle as we watched our eldest son go undefeated in his senior year. There has been less wrestling for our family since then, for various reasons, including a pandemic, but we're now coming to the pinnacle of our youngest son's high school wrestling career.
Current events
Saturday was a huge day, as predicted, but a good one. We got up at 4 a.m., and I joined my husband as he drove the team two hours to Yokosuka, the US Naval Base south of Yokohama. We got on base very smoothly (not to be taken for granted; it's kinda like entering another country via immigration, except there are more guns and rules about what you can do on the "inside"). It was too cold to linger outside, so we entered the gym and sat in there for 11 hours, with teams from 11 other schools. The actual tournament went for about nine of those . . . continuously! It's an acquired taste. It says something about us that we weren't bored! Although I did try to lie down for a while on the hard bleachers, it didn't last long when one of our team was called up to wrestle and how could you not watch and shout encouragement?
Our son didn't meet his first opponent until around noon, so there was a lot of nervous tension up till then (at least he and I had nervous tension). And, to be honest, that tension continued much of the day as he had not previously wrestled any of his three opponents, so it was a bit hard to know how hard they'd be. Great result in the end, though—he came through undefeated and won gold. We were elated, but pretty bleary by then. The adrenaline (and dinner) helped us get through the last couple of hours on the road to get home.
Thankfully last Sunday was a quiet day and by the time Monday came around I was almost good to go! And now it's Friday again. This weekend looks different: tomorrow, for the first time in three weeks we don't have to put an alarm on, as there's nowhere to go.
This Sunday, however, we'll leave from school around noon with the wrestling team and our bags. We're going to the "big" three-day tournament called "Far East Wrestling Tournament", the final tournament of the season. It includes US military schools from the whole region (just Japan and Korea from what I can tell), as well as the three international schools from Tokyo with wrestling programs (us!). That's around 15 schools and probably over 150 wrestlers. When our eldest was a Senior we also went to this tournament, except it was a bit more complicated, as it was a couple of hours south of Seoul in Korea!
David and I are only going to the first two days. But we'll stay the two nights locally in a hotel, which will save a lot of driving and time, and hopefully help us cope with the nine-hour days in the gym. But it will be so good to be there cheering our team on, especially spending time focusing on our youngest son, who has more often than not just had to tag along as we did things with his eldest brother. He'd been dragged along to wrestling meets for several years before he ever got to officially do it himself. It's great to have the flexibility to invest some time in his life alone this season.
Why have you gotten so involved in wrestling?
I did have to admit to a small group of missionaries that I met on Monday that "we're a bit nutty". It truly is still a bit hard to explain our passion for wrestling, although it's probably better framed as "we're passionate about supporting our boys in their sporting choices". That generally makes more sense to people. It's not easy as parents to forge relationships with teenage boys, and we've been very thankful that wrestling has been one way to connect with two of them. We've spent so many hours attending meets, but even more talking about it!
Wrestling is also something of a family sport. It's reasonably common to see multiple wrestlers in the same family (parent and child, and siblings). One family from another school who we've met many times over the years has four children; all of them have wrestled at school! It makes it easier if everyone is doing the same sport, that's for sure! But it's also true that kids are different and not all enjoy it. That's been true in our family. Our middle son had a couple of goes at the sport, but for a few reasons really couldn't commit to it.
How did you get into wrestling to start with? (something Australians particularly ponder)
An Australian friend asked us this last month. The story is pretty simple, really. At our school there are only two inter-school sports for middle and high school boys in the winter season: basketball and wrestling. Our eldest son tried basketball in his first year of middle school and he didn't particularly enjoy it. During PE that year one of the teachers did a single period introducing the 6th graders to wrestling and in that short time caught our son's attention.
He took up wrestling in 7th grade and was hooked by the end of that season. He's not strayed far from wrestling ever since. In fact he's still wrestling at 23. He's part of a private wrestling club near where he lives and has twice competed in the Australian Nationals as an adult. Last year he won silver (which I always have to temper with the understanding that this is an extremely minor sport in Australia, until we introduced him to this club in Brisbane, we knew no one involved in the sport in our home country).
Is it right to feel proud about sporting success?
This is a question our eldest asked on Wednesday when someone he doesn't know mentioned his achievement as a senior. We were watching our school duel with another school on their live feed and there were two commentators hosting the event. We're pretty sure that the guy who mentioned our son was a wrestler when our son won Far East in 2017.
I'd been pondering that question too as I posted videos and photos from Saturday on my social media and received lots of congratulations and "likes". It's pretty clear to me, though, that there are a lot of factors that go into a sporting success like our son had on the weekend. So many things we have no control over:
- They are actually holding tournaments again. If he'd been a senior in 2021 or 2022, he never would have had this chance!
- Physical and mental health are things that we have a little bit of control over, but not as much as we'd like to think, mostly it's a gift. You may not realise it, but it takes a lot of mental strength to persevere at wrestling, and even more to succeed. It takes years to learn and when you're out on the mat, there's nowhere to hide.
- We've learned the hard way that the US Department of Defense requires very little to cancel sporting events. More than once in our 12 years of involvement in wrestling, a forecast of snow has shut whole bases down and cancelled tournaments.
- Our guys are natural athletes. There's no mistaking that they've worked very hard (our youngest's muscle definition is something to behold!), but they also have a certain level of gifting for the sport of wrestling, that's not something they've achieved on their own, though they've certainly capitalised on it.
- We've also had the opportunity to send our boys to a school where there's good opportunities for sport, that is definitely not a given when you are a missionary.
So, I remain an enthusiastic supporter. Good thing too, because despite this season being nearly over (one more tournament for our son), it looks like we're in this for the duration. Our youngest wants to join the team as soon as he can, which could mean I'll be watching wrestling live for the next 10 years!
Yep, that has happened! Though this is our last year as parents, and therefore the deep, gut-wrenching involvement that means you commit to spending 15-hour days doing this are nearly over.
Here's something else I wrote about the sport in that blog post that you might not realise:
For a combat-type sport, it really is interesting to behold how non-aggressive it is. Even while wrestling, there generally isn't nastiness, the best wrestlers are well controlled in their actions. They really approach it in a "gentlemanly" type way, with handshakes all round and even the occasional hug between wrestlers. Sometimes the coaches shout in protest about a call the ref made, but generally it isn't too major. And there's generally no nastiness (at least that I've heard) from the supporters in the stands.
If you've gotten this far you might be interested in reading one more thing. At the end of our eldest son's high school wrestling career, I wrote a blog post reflecting on wrestling and the season that had just past: https://mmuser.blogspot.com/2017/02/reflections-on-wrestling-this-season.html
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