Wrestling with Life

Sure enough, the loudspeaker called my name to the assigned mat, and across from me stood the Kid, Hank giving him some sort of pre-match rubdown in his corner. Coach Hendershot offered me one brief but brilliant piece of advice. “Phillip,” he said (he always called his wrestlers by their full names —another subtle way of making them feel important), “this guy is a shooter. Stay off him, and if he shoots, I want you to squeeze his lights out and hit that gator roll. I’ve seen you hit that move in practice on Christopher (his son), and it will work.” Good enough for me. Just as my Coach predicted, the Kid began the match in a catlike crouch and bounced around like Muhammad Ali, apparently showing off in front of the kid in tennis shoes. His first attack to my legs was lazy and from at least four feet away. I did as instructed; I stepped back, sprawled, and squeezed his head and arm until I heard an audible cry from the Kid. Bam! Bam! Bam!—three gator rolls. Six points on the scoreboard.

The Kid was stunned, and Hank exploded to the middle of the mat. “That was a choke,” he howled, and a three minute delay ensued as he demanded the points be taken off the board and I be penalized or, even better, disqualified. The referee refused, and the match continued. They say “styles make fights,” and the rest of the match was more of the same. The Kid kept shooting, and I kept squeezing. Hank kept screaming. Toward the end, because I knew only a few paltry wrestling moves, I sneaked in a handful of my patented cheap shots normally reserved for my brother in our basement. When the hand-wound clock struck zero, the gym went crazy. The mighty Kid had fallen. The Kid cried like Willem Dafoe in the movie Platoon, wailing on his knees, looking to the heavens like his life had literally ended. Hank walked up to me and shoved a meaty finger in my chest. “This ain’t over; I’m protesting,” he said. My coach intervened. People started crowding around me like I had won the Olympics, slapping me on the back and congratulating me. My coach was beaming. Apparently the Kid had beaten many of our top-level wrestlers time and time again, and he had finally dropped one.

The match was special to me—my first big win. It gave me a confidence I cannot describe, and I used that momentum to win a couple of national-level tournaments during the next year and many matches in the ensuing ten years.

“What happened to the Kid?” you ask. He never wrestled again. My teenage vanity led me to believe that the great Phil Nowick had scared him out of the sport. A few years later, I learned that Hank, as was his standard practice, had beaten the Kid somewhat severely that night to “straighten him out.” The Kid blew a fuse and became a highly troubled youth. His hair grew down to his knees, and he became heavily involved in drugs. True story.

There are several morals to this tale. First, as a wrestling coach or parent, don’t be Hank. Don’t be anything like Hank. Be the exact opposite of Hank. Teach your kids to have fun at all costs. Constantly guard against the mentality, as parent/coach or both, of somehow measuring your kid’s career and pinning your own happiness to it. Hank is living proof that if you don’t enjoy the journey together, the trophies and titles mean absolutely nothing. Nothing rings truer about the sport than Nick Purler’s quote at the beginning of this story: “Don’t let the pressures of competition outweigh the pleasures of competition.” If you are having a particularly bad day, substitute the word “competition” with the word “life,” and you will find you have just given yourself some of the sagest advice you will ever receive.