But of all the sports that I have mentioned, there is one that truly stands out in giving my three sons important lessons in life – wrestling. I’ve never wrestled in my life but have watched my sons get slammed and beat up every practice, struggle with their weights, starve themselves just to make weight for months on end, get bloodied after a match, endure pain in different parts of their bodies, and still end up loving the sport so much that they strive very hard just to earn a metal around their necks. There must be someting in the sport that makes it tick.
In my opinion, it is one of the hardest and the toughest high school sport around – if not the hardest and the toughest. It is not for everyone. Anybody can wrestle, don’t get me wrong. But to be able to endure and stay with the sport for a long time, one must be able and willing to take all the physical and mental punishments associated with the sport. Only the toughest remain. The conditioning level, physical and mental demand of practice that each wrestler go through 5-6 days a week is nothing to be sneered at. Wrestlers must possess a lot of discipline in regards to food intake to be able to maintain their weight throughout the season, dieting to near starvation. Unlike football players and swimmers who must consume lots and lots of carbohydrates to maintain their strength and endurance, wrestlers must make do with the minimum carb and protein intake just to get by their practices and matches, lest they run the risk of bumping up a weight class or losing their slot on the team.
Wrestling is the purest form of combat sport with only the bare hands and legs as your weapon, not to mention the oldest sport known to man. Wrestlers are the most dedicated athletes around. They have no team to work with them to pin an opponent, no one to fall back on when they make a mistake and have themselves only to blame if they lose. They have the leanest, meanest and strongest physique among their peers. They never back down or avoid any match or competition, afterall, that’s what they look forward to after all the blood, sweat and tears that flowed on the mat. There are no timeouts, no substitution, no place to hide and no way to escape in a wrestling match.
As the saying goes – once you have wrestled, everything else in life is easy.
