[photo by John Wallach, 1991]
I never played football, but I did wrestle in high school. I grappled for Suffern High School, one of the better wrestling programs in southern New York State.

Some folks ridicule the idea that "sports build character." Personally, I learned a great deal from having wrestled. You have to learn how to act when you're up by a large margin; likewise when the butt-kickery is coming your way. In a sport like wrestling, where it's a team sport where individuals compete one-on-one, there are even more examples. Twice I was the only wrestler on the team to lose a match during a dual meet. How does a teenager learn to handle his teammates being elated when he had a lousy match? Once I was one of two wrestlers to not lose, when the team was beaten 55-4 out on Long Island.

I saw a team in upstate NY [undefeated in dual meets for several years] put on a strobe light and heavy metal music show before the match. How do you deal in life when the competition is flaunting their success? You still have to compete, whether it's on the mat or in the courtroom or in the corporate world. Look, if you are a salesman for a living, there's always going to be some salesman that gets all the awards. [heh, just teasing, Jeff. Congrats.]

And don't even start with the bad calls. Life isn't fair, and bad calls are a part of life. I had one of the best wrestlers in the county going to his back [would have been a five-point move] and the ref blew the whistle. That was only seconds into the match. You have to move on, and continue with the task at hand; that goes for everything in life. [I was really pissed, though. The local paper was doing a story on that wrestler, and the local paper hated our team. At least, that was our perception. I ended up losing the match 5-3, and it would have been schweeeeeeet to beat their poster boy.]

I always had trouble adjusting when someone quit the team, but that's another lesson that you learn. You sit next to the guy in class, and you don't know what to say, but you learn. Next they'll have "awkward situation management."

You can't manage a teenager into being a team player by enacting some policy. I competed in the 119lbs division, yet for five matches in the begining of the season the team needed someone at 138lbs. What if the family, or the small business, or the community needs someone to step up and fill a role? Where does someone learn to accept that type of challenge, which is always going to pop up later in life? There's no glory in getting dragged around the mat by a guy 20lbs heavier than you. [There's no fun in it, either!]

How do you learn to give 100% when you're goal is officially out of reach, when the pinnacle you sought is now unattainable? When you've worked hard and set a goal to win a tournament, only to be knocked out in the semi-finals, do you continue with the same effort and try to win third place? Or do you mail it in, because you can't win it all?

Now, as for being down by 50 points in football, wrestling is a little different. If a wrestler is down by 15 points during the match, it's over; a technical fall. And a major difference, if a wrestler is down by 14 points during a match, he can still pin his opponent and win. However, in a dual meet or a tournament, if your team is getting trounced, each individual must still step out on the mat. I've seen dual meets where the score was mathematically out of reach, yet three or four more wrestlers still had to step out there. Some gave their best effort, some didn't. Are you going to take that lesson away from them?

Telling High School athletes to tone it down a bit, simply because they're up by ton of points is not smart. They must learn to win with grace. Likewise, there are going to be days, long after one's days of competing are over, when you aren't going to be good enough. Every week there are tasks that I fail to accomplish at work. It's the nature of my job; we try to satisfy every task, but that's simply not possible. I do the best I can, day in and day out. There's no policy to make my job easier or less embarassing when I'm not having a good day, and I'm glad I learned some lessons in handling adversity as a teenager.