Have you ever thought of what kind of person joins wrestling? The wrestling team is easy to join, with the team having its biggest roster in the history of the program this year. Practice is on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday every week from 3 p.m. to 5:40 p.m.
Both boys and girls can join the team as long as their medical and permission papers are done, they have a 90% attendance rate, and they are academically eligible to join. And wrestling experience isn’t required to join the team, as the team itself is very willing to give students the experience they need. The greatest thing that the team values is motivation. Senior member Nikoloz Jintchvelashvi stated, “The hardest part is to keep pushing, and I’d recommend it to someone who wants it to motivate them.”
The wrestling team started long ago, but unfortunately, they had a rough start after COVID-19. With just barely 7 members, they were able to keep the team, work together to win as many matches as they could, and also try their best not to let their losses affect them. Their coach, Mr. Conrade, said that wrestling was “a humbling and harsh life lesson.” But as of now the wrestling team has grown over thirty percent since last year and are still continuing to grow.
Wrestling really challenges the members, especially when one of them loses a match. It makes them think about giving up on wrestling, as confidence is destroyed after only gaining it after winning all the time. which makes it extremely hard for some of the members to stay motivated. However, even with all that, thankfully the students from our school have been extremely resilient in order to secure wins at every match they attend. Like the captain of wrestling senior Adbeel Avila-Sanchez stated, “Because of wrestling, I was able to improve my ability to discipline myself into doing something that can be challenging to continue doing over a long period of time and even stay motivated while doing so.” This really shows how hard it can be when you’re involved in a competitive sport.
Likewise, many members last year were seniors, and only a few were juniors and younger that stayed in wrestling reflecting upon their previous season. As senior Alex Chen says, “I hope to win more duels as a team and wrestling matches as an individual goal. Last year, my team record wasn’t something I could say I was proud of, so this year I want to make it count and win it all. This shows his determination for the upcoming season, hoping to come back stronger after last season.”
Although wrestling may be a sport, it is also a form of martial arts, which is much different than any other sport like basketball, badminton, or soccer. As senior Chen said, “I chose wrestling initially to learn self-defense and martial arts, but as I got more involved in tournaments and wrestling duels, I really fell in love with the sport. Wrestling really opened my eyes to the importance of maintaining a healthy diet while finding balance to hit the gym. I loved doing all that, and wrestling just encapsulated all my passion into a sport.” As it shows, the diet and overall lifestyle have to become stricter than those of regular athletes, as some may have a decent or bad diet but have the skills to play their role in that particular sport, like soccer, as goalies.
In wrestling, as a martial arts hybrid sport, there aren’t really roles as a team; it’s a whole bunch of one on one with the other team, divided into weight classes for each member of the team, while all the skills of the overall players are practically on the same scale. Which also means that in this contest of one on one, it’s more about everyone being capable of all the overall skills and techniques of the sport. In other words, you have to be the best in all fields of play in order to win in this sport, as soccer teams or basketball teams have room for a decent or less skilled goalie or defender in exchange for a better attacker.
