How Wrestling Has Changed My Life

Then, high school came along and I received a rude awakening that I was no longer top dog on the wrestling team. I lost more matches that first year of highschool wrestling then I had my whole junior high career combined. I was devastated that year I thought that I would never want to wrestle again. However, when wrestling rolled around that next year I was the first in line to show up.

Wrestling is one of the oldest sports known to man. It was also the first sport to be brought into the olympics in Ancient Greece. To cut out the oldest sport known to man out of the olympics is unthinkable. Most importantly, wrestling teaches self respect, self control, self confidence, self defense, self esteem, and most of all, how to work as a

Sports have been a huge part of my life ever since I was about five years old. It has impacted my life so much. The biggest challenge that I faced was with my injuries during basketball and soccer season. I recently had to quit soccer and basketball, which was difficult for me.

I started wrestling in sixth grade. Even though I didn’t win one of my first seven matches, I developed into a successful wrestler. In high school I won tournaments and beat high-quality wrestlers. During my junior year I was determined to become a great wrestler. I worked harder than ever and didn’t let anyone stop me. That year I lost the Illinois state wrestling tournament championship match by one point. Over the next six months between my junior and senior season I was runner up at AAU national tournament and wrestled at Disney Land in Florida at the Disney Duals with over 50 other teams and only lost 1 of 8 matches. These are a few of my achievements in high school. Now that I am in college there are many

If you aren’t humble in wrestling then you will get cocky and mess up during a match, because you will think that you are better than everyone else in your weight class. This lesson taught me to not be a sore loser or a sore winner, but to be grateful to have the opportunity to go out and do what I love; this will help because later in life if I don’t get a job, I won't go home and cry myself to sleep, I will get back up and start again and again.

Athletics had not always been a flauntable aspect of my life as they are now. In grades 1-4, I was uncoordinated and far too lanky to produce and store any muscle. I often ponder about what changed in the fifth grade, for I became very agile and have exercised almost every day since the beginning of that year. I did not pick up the sport of swimming until the seventh grade and I cannot imagine myself not swimming, not only as a source of exercise but as a source of pure pleasure.

You can’t accomplish this sport with trials and pains. The toughest guys that walk in the hallways are wrestlers. We can cannot be compared with any other sport player. Even though it is not the most popular sport in nation, but in certain parts it is very well known. I love what i do.

The joy in his eyes though made the hours we had to wait worth it. Watching my older brother out there in the center of mat fighting for a victory made my heart swell with pride, even when he lost. I fell in love with the sport.

Because my sophomore year of wrestling was over too i decided to do a lot of offseason wrestling. I really was able to fall in love with the sport and continue to get better and better. At the beginning of my junior year i was super

A popular saying around every gym, field, track, and weight room is that it, no matter what activity “it” is that a sportsman is participating in, is ten percent physical and ninety percent mental. For the kids who hear this daily, it is nothing more than a hollow statement a coach says to make them feel better about being physically subordinate to their opponents. I have heard this mantra throughout my life on the baseball field, football field, track, gymnasium, in the weight room, and on the wrestling mat. Just like those poor aforementioned kids being yelled at by their coach, this statement just bounced off me, never finding a sticking place among all my doubt and insecurity. Nowhere was this more true that on the wrestling mat; Coach Jaimez has told my teammates and I this countless times, and not once throughout my first four years of wrestling did this ever sink in. I am ashamed of this, as those athletes in the know, whether they be in High School or draped in their nation’s flag competing for a gold medal, know that this statement could not be more true for the sport of wrestling. Wrestling is a mental sport that is determined by a competitor’s decision to focus on himself rather than his opponent and the competitor’s confidence in himself and his potential to succeed.

Much of my life has been influenced by the sport of wresting. My father is the head wrestling coach of the high school I attend; my whole life I have watched the sport, and spent time with his past teams. In the fifth grade I told my father that I no longer wanted to continue wrestling; we made a deal that when I reached high school I would join the team and if I still felt that wrestling was not a sport I wanted to pursue, I could quit again and end my career. When I entered high school, my brother had already been attending the same school and wrestling for my dad on the school team, so adapting to high school and high school sports was more simple for me than other students. The winter of my freshman year I was, as I had promised my father, out for the wrestling team.

“Once you have wrestled everything else in life is easy” – Dan Gable. This quote might not seem true to everyone but not everyone has wrestled. Wrestling is a difficult sport. Wrestling wears on you physically and mentally. The sport of wrestling has many difficult tasks and most people say that you don’t have to cut weight you really don’t but it’s part of the sport just like fouls are a part of basketball. Cutting weight is one of the hardest parts of the sport.

With the removal of wrestling from the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is also taking away many dreams for young wrestlers all over the world. Wrestling is a very mentally and physically challenging sport. “More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill, none have wrestled without pride”(Dan Gable).To become successful at it, one must practice regularly and put in a large amount of work. In the United States alone there are over 260,000 wrestlers who have put in this work and dedication. Yet, this is only a small portion of the wrestlers in the world. With this being a small example of the world, it is hard to not think of the multitudes of young Olympic hopefuls whose dreams are being crushed with the removal of wrestling from the Olympics.

One big thing that i could remember from that age is starting wrestling in 7th grade at first i did not want to do it or partake in wrestling i thought it was weird because guys wrestling with other guys but then i joined the next day because i just said screw it and i might just try something new meet new people do new things so the next day i made sure i had all my stuff ready i weighed about 125 weight class i heard the end of the bell ringing i went to the locker room got changed and i went into the gym and the coach said do warmups so he had us run around in circles do sprints do stretches then the time came for practice we all lined

Judo has been a large part of my life since I was six years old. Twenty-one years have passed since I started judo, and the role that it has played in my life has transformed tremendously over the years. To me, judo has always been a sport. I have practiced countless of hours on perfecting the technique of my throws, sweeps, pins, chokes, and armbars, and my work has paid off in competition. I have competed in multiple tournaments on the national and international scope, and I have won awards in both shiai (sparring) and kata (form). However, judo to me changed into so much more after my experience at the 2015 Special Olympics World Games during the summer after my high school junior year.