Here is an article that Jim Kobbe wrote a few years ago about his experience in wrestling.



Grappling with Responsibility by Jim Kobbe

I wasn�t a bad junior varsity wrestler in high school, I was dreadful.

Perhaps I should explain.

Growing up, I always played basketball. We had a goal and backboard in our back yard, for goodness sakes, not a wrestling mat. Wrestling, however, was big in Douglass, which had wrestling families with children born, I think, wearing singlets. And during the 1970s, the Bulldogs had quite a few state champions.

While in high school, I wrote a few articles about the wrestling team for the Augusta Gazette. Assistant coach and shop teacher Dusty Rhodes (who yelled �clean UPPPPPP� at the end of each hour) had apparently read some of the articles. He suggested I go out for wrestling to learn about the sport.

So I did.

I was a senior.

Starting to wrestle at seventeen was like learning a foreign language, which I would attempt the following year in college. But that�s another story.

I quickly learned that there was more to this sport that just flopping around on a mat. It is a sport of great athleticism. It is a sport of technique. It is a sport of terminology.

Single-leg. Double-leg. Duck-under. Fireman�s carry. Cowcatcher. Heel pick.

Sheesh!

For a horrible athlete to try and learn this and compete against guys who have been doing it since they were born is like taking a crash course in Spanish, then going to Mexico and trying to fit in.

My perfect 0-4 junior varsity record is a testimony to my ability.

In my first match, my opponent from Goddard pinned me in less than thirty seconds. Matches two and three went pretty much the same, but in my last match, I survived into the second period.
As in matters of the heart, fails tends to lead one to say that much was learned from it. Perhaps because of my extraordinary failure as a wrestler, I learned some extraordinary things from wrestling.

Sure, I learned what a fireman�s carry is. And I learned by watching two of my friends win state championships that year. Most of all, though, I learned about responsibility and accountability. And I learned both on the Saturday after Christmas.

You see, there was a practice scheduled that morning. At seven o�clock. Of course, it snowed and was terribly cold and the snow was blowing.

The bed felt extra warm and cozy that morning, as I stared at the alarm clock. Maybe I�ll skip practice, I thought. They won�t care if the JV 185-pounder isn�t there.
I wanted to skip. I really did.

But I didn�t.

I got up, got ready, scraped the windshield and drove to the high school. The heat had been turned off in the locker room. And only about half the team bothered to show.
We went upstairs to the mats, did some basic warm up stuff�and then were told to go home.

Huh?

I showered, went home and went back to bed.

What a sucker I was.

A few days passed and we were back in school. At our first practice since the holiday, I dressed and went upstairs to wait for things to start.

But this practice started a bit differently.

The head coach was a guy named Dan Provence. Kind of a fun-loving guy, but a guy we knew not to mess with.

Coach Provence blew the whistle. He pointed at one wall and said, �Everybody who came to the practice last Saturday�over here.�

Then he pointed at the other wall, �Everybody who didn�t�over there.�

He had �them� face �us.� One by one, each one of them had to tell us why he did not come to practice.

After all the sheepish responses were finished, Provence turned toward �us� and told us to get dressed and go home.
The rest stayed and had to run. And run. And run until they dropped.

Today, I did not want to come to work. It was cold and there was a light snow falling and staying home sounded awfully good. But here I am.

Thirty years later, I often think of that wrestling practice. I wonder whether Coach Provence scheduled that holiday practice as a test of character. Either way, it was a great lesson for a junior varsity wrestler.

Now if I could just do that fireman�s carry�