Don’t ever give up!!

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

~Rocky Balboa~

We all have seen the “Rocky” movies and all have seen how inspired one can be by watching them (at least by the first 4). If you have not seen these movies I suggest you sit down and watch them, they are worth it! This blog post brings me to the subject of giving up, or as some call it quitting.  Wrestling is a very tough sport in which if you aren’t the top guy at a weight class, then you spend most of your season just practicing.  At Millbrook we are trying to establish more of a junior varisty wrestling program to get those kids more mat time.  In wake county we don’t have the luxury of wrestling at the middle school level, so more often than not, our kids are coming into the program as freshman with no previous wrestling experience at all.  It is a tough thing to manage, especially when you are trying to build a program that wants to compete on the state level every year.  The subject of establishing middle school wrestling in wake county can be saved for another argument, another time.

Now lets get back to the subject of giving up.  In my years of coaching I have seen many wrestlers give up on the sport just because they may have not cracked the line up since they are in a weight class in which they cannot earn the varsity spot. In my opinion, it is very sad to see these kids quit after a year or two (if they even make it one full season), just because they cannot beat the man in front of them.  We are losing good athletes to circumstances just like this.  I wish kids had more drive in them rather than the mind set, “If I fail then I can just quit.” We need to teach our children that quitting is NOT an option.  If they quit at one thing and take the easy road, they will see this as way out of many things in life, not just wrestling.  Over the years I have seen many kids wait for their roster spots to finally open up and do tremendous things in the sport.

I will give you a few examples:

Anthony Whetstone, Manhattan, KS – This young man wrestled behind a 2x state champ in high school at HWT.  He never had the chance to wrestle on the varsity team until his senior year due to the state champ finally graduating.  The result:  He won a state championship himself on his first year at the varsity level.  He never quit, got better and achieved his goal.

Mickey Humphrey, Ragsdale, NC – This wrestler stood on the depth chart behind 2 state champs from his team.  His senior year was his first year at the varisty level and he too won a NC state championship, beating the kid who majored him in the regional finals for the state title.

Here is a great article written by a friend of mine about something that happened when he was coaching.  It also includes a former teammate of mine and coach at Millbrook years ago.  The article was written about a guy who never really got a chance to wrestle varsity in the post season due to line up changes and getting beat, but he went on to wrestle in college because he never quit, and kept going.  It is a great story.  Click here for article.

These are just a few specific examples of many I can recall of all my years around this sport.  The point is you never know when it will be your shot, so you always need to work hard and never give up, regardless where you are in the depth chart.  Hard work pays off! There are also many things a wrestler can do to improve himself outside of our wrestling room.  He can make sure he goes to camp over the summer, join a wrestling club and wrestles in the off-season. The way to get better in this sport is to never stop improving, never stop working to better yourself.

And as always, this message doesn’t just apply to wrestling.  We need to apply this for our young wrestlers in the classroom and in life in general.  We want our young men to be great in the classroom and on the mat, as well as being the best they can be in all aspects of life.  So as Rocky said above, when you get hit hard in life, it is more about taking that hit and moving forward rather than just laying down and quitting! Until next time, thank you for reading.

Are you working hard enough?

“If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail.”

I have always loved this quote but don’t know exactly where I heard it first.  As we enter into the conference schedule I often think of the season we have had up to this point. Have we, as coaches, prepared our kids well enough to be successful?  Not only on the mat but in the classroom as well? I know sometimes in sports the aspect of the student-athlete gets turned around.  As a coaching staff, we frequently have meetings to discuss ways to make sure we can prepare the wrestlers and how we can improve our program both academically and athletically.

I also want to challenge my wrestlers at this point to similar questions.  Are you working hard enough on a daily basis to be the best in the mat room? Are you doing what is necessary outside of the mat room to remain successful in the class room? I do not like when students do only what is necessary to get a passing grade.  I want you wrestlers to work harder on your school work than you do on your wrestling technique.  For our seniors, are you ready to start a run that will end with a conference championship? I hope you understand that it take a WHOLE team effort to win! You need to take care of your team and yourselves, this means helping to keep things on track during practice as well as leading by example.

I could go on all day with tips and questions about what to be thinking about as the first conference match approaches, but of course no wants to read a book.  So I will keep this post short and sweet.  But I leave everyone who reads this with the challenge to apply to every aspect of their lives…

“Are you working hard enough?”