My best friend was a HUGE WWE fan. Posters on the wall, watched every (tape-delayed) episode that came on. I had done karate in Japan and Judo in the Netherlands (where I was currently living). He says, "they have a wrestling team! Let's go out"
I agreed. We show up. No ropes and squared circle. He hated it, I loved it. I told my mom I was joining the wrestling team, and she said, "Yeah right" That first year, I wrestled in tennis shoes, because my mom refused to buy me wrestling shoes. She was sure I would quit. In her defense, I had quit most everything else she didn't make me stay in. Freshman year, nothing to write home about, qualified for Europeans (Military base states). Sophomore year, I turned into a weight cutter. Went from 126 to 113. Obviously not the biggest of deals, but I procrastinated. Slept in a sauna suit in front of a furnace. My wife has always told me that my superpower is my ability to sleep. I can fall asleep, anywhere, anytime, and I'm pretty sure I can reach REM deep sleep in 13 minutes or less. Made weight. Beat the guy ranked 2nd in Europe at the time but finished the year 0-2 again at Europeans.
Junior year I move back stateside, to Georgia. Qualified for state as a junior and senior. Junior year I went 0-1 (only quarterfinalist losers wrestled in consis) and senior year a round away from placing. The one thing that never bothered me was weight cutting. My senior year, I went from 145 to 125, and, in hindsight, I probably did it a better way than most. I didn't diet (that was stupid), but I also never starved myself. I would wait until the night before, have practice and go to the gym and get a workout in. A couple times I did step aerobics with plastics and a two layers of sweats on. The instructor didn't know how to take it, but since I kept up, she never really said anything. I would head straight to the sauna after that and get a run in in the morning. I lived on Sour gummy worms for that 12 hours or so. A nutritionist once told me that wasn't a "bad idea" since the sugar is an immediate energy source. I never crashed, so I'm sure I was lucky that way.
My one regret was my coaches never told me about summer wrestling. We didn't wrestle year round, I didn't know what Fargo was, I didn't know there was summer wrestling AT ALL. We went to one camp in the summer and that was it. I had no idea how to become good at the sport. I call my coach to this day and blame him for me not wrestling in college. It's all I ever wanted to do, but I knew I wasn't good enough.
I coached my brother his junior and senior year in Florida, and I've been an assistant coach ever since. I'm at a small private school and we do well. The one thing I've always been is a Hawks fan. My coach was a Hawk fan, told us about how the Hawkeyes were the best, and I've been a fan ever since.
