6 Minutes Wrestling with Life

Pre

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it,
And,
Which is more,
You'll be a man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

October 10th, 2009

Nearly three decades after my wrestling career ended acrimoniously, I read something profound Ben Askren wrote:

"A champion is not someone who won his last match of the season, a champion was the person who gave his all in attempting to do so."

Yes, there can be many champions at once. Even though only one champion will be asked for his autograph, all the others will walk away with a wonderful feeling knowing they did everything they could to achieve their goal.

That fulfilled inner feeling is worth more than any request for an autograph.

And it lasts a lifetime.

I am walking into my boy's bedroom; it is 4:45 a.m. The room is a mixture of a young boy's room decorated with baseball, and a teenager's room decorated with wrestling. One can tell there was a

transition in the boy's lives, somewhere around the age of twelve; we never redecorated their room, only added to it.

I approach Travis's bed to wake him up to go to the wrestling tournament that starts in four hours, one hundred miles away.

Before I tap him on his shoulder, I notice a cloth poster hanging from his wall – one that I gave him.

It is of Steve Prefontaine, the legendary long distance runner who died too young.

It reads, "A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest, I run a race to see who has the most guts."

I reflect for a second on the lessons I am trying to teach the boys:

Sometimes you win, and sometimes you learn.

Wrestling, is not about beating your opponent, it is about beating yourself. To constantly push yourself to new heights, to never be content with what you have done in the past, to always strive to improve yourself, regardless of the outcome.

I want them to learn that each outcome will provide a variable lesson, which is needed to achieve their ultimate success.

A win will build confidence, and a loss builds desire.

And that desire to improve is what makes champions.

Most importantly, I want them to know that in every loss there is a lesson that you need to learn, and one by one when you learn the lessons they will all come together to make you a man.

The Super 32 is less than three weeks away. The boys have been training hard. Their devotion to the sport is about four hours a day.

Our routine is, practice at 6:00 p.m., so we arrive a half hour early, at 5:30, which means we leave our house at 5:00.

Practice ends at 8:00 p.m., afterwards they hang around and we leave by 8:30. We drive to and arrive at the hospital parking lot by 9:00 p.m., I say goodbye to them, I run upstairs and within five minutes their mom replaces me and takes them home.

Monday through Thursday.

Rest on Friday.

Tournament on Saturday.

Rest on Sunday.

That is the routine.

Today is Saturday.

The tournament is in Lower Hudson Valley, NY

It lasts for eight hours.

In the end, Maverick's matches pretty much all went the same way.

He would start his match with his head gear on, and by the time the second period started, he would fling his head gear off during the competition as if to say "So, you want to fight, eh?"

He looked good, not great. He went 4-1 with a win over a talented wrestler from Wantagh. But it is not that win Maverick will dwell on for the next week; it is the 2-1 defeat at the hands of a state qualifier from Cornwall.

Travis is on a roll. He is wrestling with extreme confidence and he's in a nice rhythm. Wearing a turquoise penguin singlet and bright yellow wrestling shoes, so he'd better back it up.

He does today.

His final's match is an overtime win over a quality wrestler from Pine Bush.

The ride home is silent.

Winning gives you confidence, losing gives you desire.

Travis is sleeping.

Maverick is brewing.

Maverick is sitting in the passenger seat watching his match on the video camera.

At one point his opponent has a 2-1 lead, he is on the bottom, Mav on top and Mav is getting frustrated because his opponent is stalling.

Maverick is throwing cross face after cross face, inserting his elbow to his opponent's neck; he is wrenching on his opponent's shoulder to score that last two points.

To quote Steve Prefontaine: "Somebody may beat me but they are going to have to bleed to do it."

Bill Bowerman, Steve Prefontaine's legendary coach at Oregon, was once asked to describe what makes Steve Prefontaine different – he replied,

"You can't teach desire."