“The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.” – Marcus Aurelius

What’s the Toughest High School Sport?

A Reader Remembers His 2 Weeks as a Wrestler 

From Joe M:

I was a basketball player in high school, but I tried wrestling senior year after I failed to make the team. (Last one cut.)

I thought I could learn a thing or two from the sport. An additional incentive was that two of my friends were wrestlers. It would be a chance to make new friends and enjoy the comradery of a team of wrestlers.

There was indeed comradery on the team, and I enjoyed that. What I learned was that wrestling is a team sport, but only secondarily.

The primary fact about the sport of wrestling is that, although you may be part of a team during practice, when match time comes, it’s just you and your opponent, out to beat the other, in front of everybody else.

I didn’t have the physical toughness back then to endure the hours of hard-core training. Nor did I have the mental toughness to endure the humiliation of defeat. Eventually, I had to accept what I had done – quit on myself. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that again.

My Non-Experience as a High School Wrestler 

I never joined the high school wrestling team, and I’ve always wondered why. Back then, I got into a lot of scraps – like two or three a week – and always considered myself a good grappler.

I did try out. During that tryout, I was tested against a kid that had been sectional champion the year before. He was a better athlete – quicker, stronger, and better coordinated – but I had a 10-pound advantage. I beat him easily, but illegally. The coach wanted me to join the team, but by the time we finished a “sample” practice I had decided, like Joe M, that it was far more work than I was willing to put up with.

I always regretted that decision, and I think for the same reason Joe M did.

I’ve never thought about it before, but I think wrestling may be the most challenging high school sport.

The physical challenge is enormous. You spend several hours every day, sometimes twice a day, training very, very hard in a hot and stinky room.

Sure, you train hard for team sports. But with team sports (think basketball, baseball, soccer, etc.), the athlete doesn’t have to go at 100% nearly 100% of the time. In fact, that’s counterproductive. With team sports, you learn the skill of intermittent effort: sprinting, then standing, then moving at a moderate pace, and then sprinting again.

With solo sports like tennis, you train hard, too. But again, you don’t have to go full out for the entire match. As with team sports, pacing yourself is key.

But with wrestling, there’s no such thing as a comfort zone, because the wrestler does not dictate the pace he must keep. His opponent does.

I came to understand the physical challenge of wrestling, when, at 47, I began practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And it has been responsible for keeping me in relatively good shape all these years (notwithstanding time out for three surgeries and many other injuries).  It’s just you and another person engaged in the most rudimentary competition – one person attempting to physically dominate and submit another person, in front of an audience that is rooting for or against you.

But the biggest challenge was, and is, the mental challenge of allowing yourself to fail and lose, over and over again, in a public arena.

Try it. You might like it.

Me, at 58, 12 years ago… after winning two firsts in NAGA (North American Grappling Association). I have selected this photo from several that were more relevant because I wanted to show you how I looked then. I’m 23 pounds heavier now, but I like to think that somewhere underneath the gentle slopes of my current body’s fat this old musculature remains.