Wrestling

A few months ago, we signed Cooper up for youth wrestling. We had been doing basketball camps already, but this was the first chance we had to get him into the wrestling room to see if he would like it. He was lukewarm initially, but quickly came around and began to look forward to each practice. Emma was already having traveling basketball practices, so that meant Carys, who was kind of adrift each evening, was left to her own devices in terms of entertainment.

One evening, bored to tears while we watched Cooper warming up on the mat, she asked, "Can I do wrestling too?" Of course, my Mama instinct said no way, absolutely not, but her Daddy the wrestler was quicker with a response: "Sure, Sis, come on out here."

I cringed, I winced, I cautioned, I pleaded, but to no avail. She ran happily out to join her dad and brother, and that was only the beginning. Each night thereafter, she packed a bag with shorts and a tee shirt and jumped right in to the mix, learning single leg take downs and half nelsons, and thoroughly enjoying herself. Soon she asked for wrestling shoes, and a singlet, and Aaron tried to convince me that her flexibility and core strength was helping her hold her own on the mat, at least with her practice partners.

As a mom, it is painful to watch your son get taken down hard and stretched into multiple unnatural configurations, but it is doubly difficult to watch your little girl, who formerly spent her days curled up on your lap with a stuffed animal and storybooks get thrown into a headlock and flipped over onto her back.
She braved her first mat burns, her first accidental choke hold, a few bruises and other unmentionable scuffles all the while basking in the glow of her father's attention.

Cooper also began to thrive...due in no small part to his sister tagging along to practice with. She outweighs him by 3 pounds, so he has to make up in technique what he lacks in weight. Aaron is proud as punch, obviously, and before long we were wrestling in Sherburn on Monday nights, in Blue Earth on Tuesdays, and in Fairmont on Thursdays.

This weekend we thought they were ready to try their first Open Tournament. There have been a number of Team tournaments throughout the winter, but we didn't think they were ready to wrestle-off for a position on the team. An Open allows everyone to enter, unattached to a team, and it was finally time to see if their practice minutes were making any kind of difference in their skills.

We arrived for the Fairmont Youth Open early, to get a jump on weigh-ins. Cooper made the 45 pound class, and Carys made the 50 pound class, and both kids were giddy and excited. As the rest of the world poured into the gym, I began to get really nervous. There was a line forming outside the building to check in and register. The stands were packed. All ten mats were crawling with kids practicing. At one point, they surpassed 200 in registration, and I was full of anxiety.

Carys and Cooper tussled around for a little while on the mat, calmly ate a banana next to me in the stands, and casually sipped on their water bottles. I chewed on my fingernails, re-braided Carys' hair for the third time, and tried desperately NOT to look on the outside like I was feeling on the inside.

Coop's class was called first, and Aaron took him down to the mat. He lost his first match, mostly because he was so surprised by the actual meet format that he wasn't very prepared and he got pinned almost immediately. As soon as the ref held up the other boy's hand, Cooper finally realized what that meant, and he just plain got mad. The next match he battled much better; in the middle of the match Carys yelled, "Sink it in deep, Cooper!" and Aaron about died laughing - she pays attention at practice, apparently! When the ref held up Cooper's hand at the end of the match, his grin spread ear to ear. By the end of the day he got to stand on the 3rd place podium and get a medal to take home. If he wasn't convinced before, he was definitely convinced now, and you could see the pride and excitement glowing in his eyes.

And then it was Carys' turn. When they called her class down to the mat, I thought maybe I was going to throw up. There is no fear like the fear of the unknown, and I had no idea how this was going to go. It was clear that these kids were here for real competition; I knew this would be very different from the clinical approach that they were seeing in practice.

She stepped on the mat for her first match, and at the whistle I tried to concentrate on filming so I didn't think so much about what was actually happening. Grandma Gail, who has had years and years of practice cheering from the edge of the mat, was shouting all sorts of encouraging words, and Carys just grinned and giggled and wrestled her way through three rounds. She lost by decision, but she made it all three rounds without incident.

I breathed a little, then, and Aaron picked her up and squeezed her hard and she was pretty happy with the first one, even though she didn't win. For her second match, we all thought it would probably be similar to the first one. Except it wasn't. Her competitor was a no-nonsense little tough guy and Carys walked almost immediately into a headlock. One of the Fairmont coaches was kneeling on the sideline and he talked her through it, trying to get her to hook his leg. She survived to the end of the period, but she was definitely a little rattled. She took the up position to start round two, and just wasn't strong enough to hold him. He got away from her, and she walked right into headlock #2. This time he threw her down, and she hit the mat pretty hard. I could hear her gasp a little, and my throat closed up and my heart stopped beating for a few seconds I think. Fortunately her practice minutes paid off, because she rolled through it and nearly earned a reversal. But the damage was done, because while she wrestled hard for just a little bit more, her opponent caught her in a cradle and finally managed to pin her.

So there I stood, on the edge of the mat, feeling like I might maybe die, as Carys slowly removed her leg band, shook her opponent's hand, shook his mother's hand, and then walked over to Aaron. She held her composure until he picked her up. Then her head tucked down on his shoulder and a few tears began to drip from her eyes. She rubbed her chin and the back of her head, and said, "Mommy, that really hurt." I probably shouldn't have said anything, because her pride might have let it go at that, but my throat was already thick and I kind of choked out, "Oh honey, I know..." And then she started to cry. (I was dangerously close to tears myself.) Aaron just walked her away from the mat for a few minutes and rubbed her back and told her over and over that he was proud of her.

We both told her she didn't have to continue if she didn't want to, but once she got over the initial shock of it, she asked him, "Dad, how do I get out of that headlock? I don't want that to happen again." And Aaron jumped right on that and took her to a practice area to work on it. She didn't even hesitate to go to the next match, and she got a 4th place medal out of the deal.

I still feel terribly conflicted; on one hand I am so proud of her toughness...much more than I would expect out of your average 7 year old. She has always been the softer of my two girls, so I just have no idea where this quality came from. There is another part of me that is pulled by my mothering instinct to put the big kibosh on this wrestling business. Basketball will be starting in a few weeks for her age group, so why not wait for something less...physical, I guess?

But last night we went over to Blue Earth for practice. Aaron wasn't feeling well, so this was the first time I had attended this particular practice session. I was really impressed by Coach Wood's clinical approach to teaching technique; he spent a lot of individual time working on each skill. It was nice to see other girls on the mat as well, and Carys had no shortage of practice partners. At the end of the night, Cooper scored 5 in the Takedown Tournament, and Carys even scored 1. When Coach Wood mentioned the Blue Earth Open coming up this weekend, BOTH of my kids cheered. And on the way out the door, Carys says, "Hey Mom, I bet I can do better than 4th this weekend!"

All I can do is smile, and say "I bet you can, sweetheart, I bet you can."

The video for Carys is below; the headlock I previously described happens around 1:48.

Cooper's first win!

Busy

Life has been really busy lately; so busy, that I haven't had a single second to record some of the more significant events around here. I was pondering what kind of post I could make this month to summarize all the comings and goings and happenings in the Gudahl house, but this morning provided me with one of those time-stands-still moments that does it just beautifully for me.

The Kindergarten program at Fairmont Elementary is exceptional; I could go on all day about that. Just one example would be the nights they set aside for students to come in with a parent, have dinner together, and bond a little over their education. This fall, they hosted one of those evenings and we weren't able to attend due to other commitments. I was determined to make it to the next one, so when I saw the sheet come home I made a mental note that it was going to be held in the first week of February. Cooper began talking about it at home days and days ago, and reminded me often that there was going to be a "party" at his school. I could tell it was important to him, so I added it to the calendar in my phone.

Last night, Emma had basketball practice at the elementary school at 5:00. I am helping coach her basketball team, so I was there with her, while Carys and Cooper were attending wrestling practice with Aaron at the high school. When my practice ended, I noticed one of the girls wasn't going home, but sitting in the hallway. When I asked if she needed to call her mom, she said, "No, my mom is doing that Kindergarten thing with my brother, and I'm just waiting for them."

I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach.

I walked over to the signboard in the hallway and saw that I had, indeed, missed the program. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had entered it a day later on my calendar.

I can't tell you how terrible I felt driving home. I accept full responsibility for it; we have had somewhere to go and something to do nearly every day, nearly every minute, for the last month. Of course it makes perfect sense that the program would fall on the same night we already had two other commitments.

If I had taken a single minute to re-check the date, taken a single second out of my day to really look at what clearly was so important to the little man, I would have seen the conflict and figured out how to fit it in. Cooper has been wrestling in two different clubs all winter, so it wouldn't have been a big deal at all to miss one night of practice to attend his school function.

I dreaded having to tell him. When all 5 of us got home, it was already 7:00, and the kids were rushing through showers while I was rushing to put dinner on the table. Things were chaotic, and I thought I'd better wait to give him the bad news until things were calmer and quieter. Unfortunately, dinner was followed by a mad homework-completing extravaganza, followed by tooth-brushing, jammie-wearing, story-reading, bed-tucking, drink-of-water-getting craziness, and I just let it go.

This morning, as I was making breakfast, Cooper came into the kitchen and tugged on my sweater. He said, "Mom, do you have to work at 5:00?" I said, "No, why?" He said, "Because I think my school party is at 5:00 and I didn't want you to miss it."

I wasn't prepared, I wasn't ready. I just turned slowly around and said, "Buddy. I am so sorry, but we missed it. It was last night."

I wish I could accurately frame his reaction with my words. His face absolutely crumpled, and tears filled his brown eyes immediately. He turned on his heel and went into the living room where he threw himself on the sofa and cried his little heart out.

For a moment I just stood in the kitchen, holding a spatula in the air while the eggs bubbled behind me. Aaron looked at me, wide-eyed, and said, "Oh Sara. He was REALLY looking forward to that."

I felt just sick. I turned off the stove and went to Cooper, where he was pouring his troubles face-down into the couch cushions. As I pulled him on to my lap, I felt guilt of such an enormous magnitude. When the kids were younger, I used to devote whole days to them, individually. We would have Mommy and Emma days, Mommy and Carys days, and Mommy and Cooper days on a rotating basis. The other two would go to Grandma's, or to daycare, and I would spend time that was singular to each one alone. I haven't done that in nearly two years, I think.

There was no excuse to make; all I could do was tell him over and over how sorry I was that I had messed up. I promised to find a way to make it up to him, and he pressed his forehead into my neck and tried to catch his breath. He would wipe his eyes hard with the back of his hand, and sniff loudly, but he still wouldn't look at me. I felt truly like the lowest human on the face of the earth.

I could only promise that he and I would carve out some time together tonight and we would do something just the two of us. Suddenly I had landed on something that seemed to interest him a little more, and he finally fastened his brown eyes on me and said, "Like what?"

I was so excited that he had finally looked at me that I blurted out, "Maybe you could teach me how to play Skylanders?" (That is the name of his favorite video game, and I have had absolutely no inclination to play it whatsoever, but it was the first thing that popped into my head.) The clouds in his eyes began to part, and even though his cheeks were still red and swollen, he said, "Ok. But we better play the Giants first, because that's the easiest and you won't be very good at it."

Then, as he used the bottom of his tee shirt to wipe his nose, he launched into a description of characters, and what powers they have, and what obstacles we will face, etc. I recognized that we had turned the corner, and I sighed a little sigh of relief that we were able to get through the worst of it before I had to leave for school.

But make no mistake; I have let him down, and I know it. It feels terrible, because a promise made needs to be a promise kept, and I had PROMISED him we would attend his program. So I have some work to do, and it has to start with me slowing down the activity train a little at our house.

When you are presented with opportunities for your kids, you are quick to say yes, because you want to give them lots of experiences. In today's athletics world, every minute you give them helps, so we say yes yes yes to soccer and softball and basketball and wrestling and swimming. Multiply that times 3 kids, and some days we don't know if we are coming or going.

I have the same problem in my professional life; I coach at the high school, I coach at the elementary, I run youth camps, I run the Student Council, I'm a team leader, I'm part of the Staff Development committee...and the list goes on and on.

But the list needs to come to a screeching halt, or at least a slow crawl, because let's be real here. I like to be a positive presence in the lives of my students...but I am also in the business of being someone's mom. And I need to be a good one, because I will run out of chances to read to them, to play with them, and to make them feel like they are number one in my world.

I sent an email to the head track coach at our school today. I am taking the spring season off this year. This spring, I'm going to go to the library with my kids. I'm going to take them to the park when it is warm. I'm going to be home by 4:00 every day to make dinners, clean the house and still have time to sit on the end of their bed and read the next book in the Narnia series. I'm going to ride bikes with them outside, and jump on the trampoline, and take them to Kindergarten programs.

And as for tonight...I'm off to play video games, with my number one guy.