I learned the mythology around competitive youth and high school wrestling was steeped in error. There was the common misunderstanding that it bore a resemblance to the idiotic, clownish, steroid-soaked freak fights of platinum blonde professional WWE wrestling on television. There was also a homophobic taboo about young men who loved the sport, including mockery and taunts from kids in sports with less close contact—say tennis or lacrosse. I was learning more each week.
Yes, there were wrestling moms filling the seats in the stands, yelling their sons’ names, but most everywhere you looked—on the gym floor, in the cafeteria, in the stands—were fathers and sons. Fathers embracing their sons after a win, fathers putting their arms on the shoulders of boys after a loss.
In the early years after our divorce, my ex-husband would take the boys to wrestling tournaments if they fell on his visitation weekends. But he was never there consistently. Not every time. Not every match.
Looking around the gyms, sometimes the sons resemble their fathers so much—the slope of the jaw, the shape of the arms—that it is startling. Just observing the legacies makes me feel a lot of things, not the least of which is my somehow being responsible for what my boys did not get, that I made the choice to marry someone who would go away. That I married someone who would willfully hijack my sons’ feeling that they are loved unconditionally by both parents. I could do my part, but I could never do both parts.
The first portion of the morning consisted of weigh-ins when hundreds of boys, and a few girls, were weighed in a separate gym from parents, accompanied by coaches, then grouped by age and weight, their weights drawn on their arms in marker. I noticed on one boy about eight or nine years old, the number 172 was drawn an inch or so high in wide, black permanent marker strokes on his upper right bicep. The way his pale flesh folded and blossomed from beneath his shiny polyester singlet made him look as if his body was filled with scoops of cookie dough. Behind him was a father with the same furtive expression and rumpling build, his thick hand firmly gripping his son’s shoulder.
The wrestlers were grouped by weight and age so the first two-minute period with thirty seconds of rest followed by two one-minute periods—with thirty seconds of rest in between—were evenly matched. Unlike high school and college, youth wrestlers didn’t need to make a specific weight; each wrestled what he weighed that morning and was grouped with other wrestlers in that weight and age bracket, say a weight range of 106–108 pounds.
Some of the compact boys in the “midget” category had muscles so sharply formed and legs with distinctly circular calves that they looked like animated resin trophies, caricatures of miniature men. I wondered if they considered the political incorrectness of the midget category and if they would eventually shift to call the category “little people.”
Boys darted through crowds standing in line at the refreshment stand or on the gymnasium sidelines, holding green or blue liter bottles of Gatorade, their hair buzzed short and purposeful, waiting for volunteers to sell them hot dogs, pizza, pretzels, donuts, popcorn, chips, or bagels with cream cheese. Their fathers were either elated or furious, some wearing XXL T-shirts stretched taut like drum covers over their bowling ball bellies. Mothers wore T-shirts with photo likenesses of their wrestlers.
In that bewitching morning hour before the wrestling began, mayhem reigned on the mats with dozens of wrestlers running in circles, jumping on each other, having chicken fights, stretching, doing jumping jacks, running in place, playing tag—all of them all at once. “Eye of the Tiger” was usually playing over the loudspeakers; it was the unofficial wrestler’s theme song. If you could’ve harnessed the raw energy in the gym, you could’ve saved the planet.
Parents chatty and amicable in the early morning settled into their stakeout sections, club teams seated with their wrestlers in the stands, stepping over McDonald’s bags and Dunkin’ Donuts boxes. The most coveted spots were in the top row against the gym wall for back support. Those wall slots filled up quickly on two sides of the gym. Some of us brought the inexpensive portable stadium seats we bought at Home Depot. If you were lucky, you might be able to find an electrical outlet for your laptop. Chances were there was no Wi-Fi. I brought dozens of papers to grade for my freshman journalism class and, in December, stacks of Christmas cards to address. I brought to-do lists, newspapers, and magazines to read. I created current events quizzes.
“Save me a spot,” I said to Caryn, who had three wrestling sons of her own, two out of her three boys the same ages as my boys. Our youngest sons, Colin and Sam, would later be inseparable best friends.
Usually, the matches were in a Chicago suburb perhaps thirty miles away and far outside my comfort zone; finding the high school only with the help of Yahoo! directions. Without a GPS, using only printed instructions, I often had to retrace my steps after mistaking a right for a left, trying desperately to remember where I spotted the last Starbucks in which strip mall near which bank. Sometimes I thought MapQuest and Yahoo! made intentional errors in the end of a trip—a left instead of a right, a north instead of a south, Glenbard East High School instead of Glenbard North—just to force drivers to pull into a gas station or 7-Eleven to get help from a clerk, who was hopefully over sixteen and knew the names of the major roads. I once asked a young clerk where the local high school was, and he replied that he didn’t have any idea. I asked someone in the parking lot on my way back to my car, and she motioned that it was a block away.
“What are you doing Sunday? Can you meet for an hour for coffee or something?” my sister Madeleine would ask.
“No; I’m watching wrestling.”
The eight or so youth tournaments each season were on Sundays because high school gyms were used for team varsity wrestling and basketball on Saturdays. Like Weldon before him, Brendan was part of Little Huskies, an offshoot of the Oak Park and River Forest High School team and one of the organized clubs that served as feeder pipelines for high school wrestling programs across the state and the country. Every week about a dozen to twenty young boys from our team wrestled, many of them the tail end of wrestling families with older brothers in the sport.
Few champions started the sport their freshman year of high school; many had been wrestling since grade school, some since kindergarten in these Sunday youth wrestling tournaments. Plenty of these boys attended supplemental private wrestling training programs twice a week all year; at some the cost of one-on-one training was one hundred dollars an hour. For groups of two to three young wrestlers, it could cost sixty dollars an hour per wrestler. I could never afford to send the boys to these elite team programs—I had neither the time nor the money to get them there. But plenty of parents did; and their kids usually won the tournaments, the state titles, the scholarships to Big Ten colleges.
As the day matured, the air grew dense and humid with the feral odor of pizza, hot dogs, and sweet, ripening sweat, the intensity thickening and festering by midafternoon. Families arrived with Igloo coolers of food like Cheetos, pork rinds, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches; separate bags of knitting and crossword puzzle books; and smaller children in car seats and strollers. Some parents left intermittently to smoke in the parking lot.
No matter how much food was brought in, it seemed so much more was purchased and so much else thrown away. Sometimes a few high-protein, low-calorie offerings were available from a concession stand, like oranges and bananas, but most of the food was deep-fried and cheesed. There were mountains of candy choices. Long, colored sugar ropes hung from many boys’ mouths to their waists as they gobbled their way to the end, like a long wick of a cartoon bomb fuse.
At some concession stands you could find the walking taco—an opened bag of Fritos with a scoop of hot chili poured on top and a teaspoon of shredded cheddar cheese, with a plastic spoon plunged into the chunky mess. I made hundreds of them working the food line at Little Huskies tournaments. You needed a Crock-Pot to heat the chili and ice to cool the bags of shredded cheese. And lots of paper towels.
<
br /> The announcer gave the predictable procedural details and then played a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” sometimes the recording by Whitney Houston, most of the time just a recorded instrumental version with a church organ. Refs blew whistles, and the wrestling matches erupted on four rubber mats with each mat divided into two. Two wrestlers were on each mat. Red and green strips of Velcro were fastened onto the boys’ ankles just before their match—the same Velcro strips used over and over again on different wrestlers—to differentiate the wrestlers for scoring. I used to wonder what the bacterial count on those strips would be at the end of the day—and then I wouldn’t let myself think about it. The ref wore one red and one green wristband and held the corresponding colored wrist in the air to quickly note the points scored for each wrestler.
In the matches, the boys looked like dancing spider monkeys on fast-forward, rolling over each other, grappling, shooting for a takedown, pinning, standing up, crying, winning, arms shot in the air. The thuds of an official pin—a referee’s slam of his open hand onto the mat signaling a boy was pinned and the match was over—occasionally pierced the air like an exclamation point. The smallest and youngest wrestlers were first. Some were so cute they looked like Power Rangers dolls, some cried inconsolably when they lost, and others were cocky and determined, like small pit bulls. The matches worked up from the youngest Midget through Novice to the Cadets, some of whom at fifteen had been wrestling ten years and looked mature enough to father children. Some even sported facial hair and tattoos.
“Now you won’t take first,” a father reprimanded his son, as if he had just committed a felony. The boy’s shoulders were shaking from crying, his neck and arms red from the recent loss. The wrestler made his way to a corner of the gym to cry.
Each mat had a nearby long, folding table where up to four scorekeepers sat, controlling the clock and the score. One mat was connected to the overhead scoreboard; the other matches were scored on foot-high cardboard cards of numbers that scorekeepers—usually high school volunteers—flipped forward on double rings to show points earned. Every match had its own digital running clock. Occasionally a parent shouted at the ref to contest a point.
“Parents off the mats, only wrestlers and coaches on the floor,” the announcer pleaded often each hour. But it was as futile as trying to stop passing drivers from watching the twisted remains of a car crash.
In the stands, boys slept like young cougars between matches, curling onto pillows, hooded sweatshirts pulled over their heads, covered by down-filled coats brought hastily from home, water bottles strewn like spent rifle casings across the floor near the orange peels and candy wrappers. A young wrestler could have as many as six matches in one day, fewer if he lost early on, more if he won. The goal was not to go home early. The goal was to go home later sporting a green ribbon with gold-colored medal for first, second, or third place.
I always waved at Weldon. I called his name. Mostly he ignored me. He had mastered the expressionless chin chuck, lifting his chin in acknowledgment in a quick upward jerk. Brendan did it too, then Colin.
But as a parent, you didn’t go for the acknowledgment; you couldn’t. It would be too upsetting; the immediate return on investment could not be measured. You went because there was no other activity you needed to do to catch up on work, run the house, or God forbid do for yourself, that was more important than being there in that gym for that child that day. Unless you had two other gyms to be in for your other children; then you did your best to catch a piece of everyone’s glory. You went because you believed—had to believe—that years from now when you were gone or when they were much older, they would remember the sight of you in the stands in the team colors screaming their names. And to them it would be a good memory.
You want to contribute to the good memories.
Your children will never recall happy memories of you getting a manicure or staying home to read a book. I felt I had a finite window on the timeline, minutes between the beginning and ending buzzers, to show them I cared enough to be there. I could get myself a manicure and read a book when they were all away at college.
With prodding from the announcer, the wrestlers in the appropriate age groups headed to the holding pen with their coaches, and officials called their names for check-in at the assigned mat number. They attempted to put novice against novice and veteran against veteran. It was no fun to beat someone easily. You wanted your matches to be tough. Team parents kept track of who on the team was wrestling when and on what mat.
“Is Brendan up next?” Caryn asked, and then we would all move together, sometimes with Leslie, Paula, and a few other moms to get closer to the mat where he was wrestling and cheer for the few minutes or less it took to declare a victory or a loss. And we would all do the same for each other’s sons. Some high schools wouldn’t ever allow you on the gym floor, and if so, we watched from the spectator’s gallery above; hoping not to stand next to the parent of the child our son was wrestling. If one of the team moms was not at the gym for the tournament, another mom would give her a play-by-play by cell phone: “He’s looking real strong, they’re circling, the other boy shot, got him down, he got out, one escape point, they’re circling . . .”
Each of them called me about Weldon, Brendan, or Colin if I was in traffic or couldn’t attend because of another commitment with another son somewhere else.
More than a few of the mothers on other teams were dressed in spandex-tight jeans and low-cut camisoles as if they were headed to a night on the casino boats, while some wore baggy sweatshirts with the youth team logo, their long brown hair sprayed into ponytails, bangs sitting stiffly on foreheads. One woman we nicknamed “Hot Mom” because at these tournaments she gave her son back massages between matches, so exaggerated and sensual it made us squirm.
One father wore a T-shirt that read, IT’S NOT THE SIZE OF THE DOG IN THE FIGHT, IT’S THE SIZE OF THE FIGHT IN THE DOG. The Little Huskies logo is that breed of dog, standing upright on two legs and looking menacing, more human than canine. Most of the logos for other youth teams were bulldogs, raptors, wildcats, or wolves. Some used a skull and crossbones for their logo. The teams had names like Force, Predators, Wolverines, Rhinos, Gladiators, Iron Men, and Grapplers.
CHAMPIONS ARE MADE, NOT BORN, read another T-shirt. A young boy carried a plastic bin of round yellow nacho chips smothered in bright orange melted cheese to his place in the stands. WILL TRADE SISTER FOR HEADGEAR was his T-shirt pronouncement. I’D RATHER THROW YOU THAN KNOW YOU, one team’s shirt read. Colin said he was sure they didn’t mean it but wore it because it rhymed. Another young man’s shirt said something about how basketball players play with balls, but wrestlers have them. He walked by too quickly for me to see it all.
“Stand up! Get up, get up!” a mother screeched to her son locked helplessly in a cradle hold on another mat.
“Drive! Drive! Drive!” a dad in warm-up pants and a baseball cap shrieked to another wrestler on a different mat. Dozens of video cameras were aimed at different contests.
“Two!” one ref shouted with the whistle clenched between his teeth, two fingers raised in the air for the scorekeepers when one wrestler had a takedown—when a wrestler successfully gets the other wrestler down and prone on the mat. When the match was over because of a pin or the clock ran out, the wrestlers removed the red or green Velcro straps from their ankles and placed them on the center of the mat. Whistles blowing, it began again and again. Parents screamed, “Pin him!” or “Stand up!” what sounded like thousands of times during the day.
A wrestler in an emerald green singlet who looked about twelve or thirteen years old landed on his wrist in a fall. His arm snapped midway up his forearm, bending it at a right angle like a chicken wing. We all gasped in the stands when we quickly learned what happened from whispers moving through the crowd like a wave. The match stopped; the young wrestler lay on his back silently until the paramedics arrived and placed him on a stretcher after immobilizing the right arm. He
was stoic, not crying but wincing. Throughout the gym, parents stood and applauded as he was rolled outside. Dozens of wrestlers in primary-colored singlets watched nervously. The wrestling continued.
When Colin was wrestling as an eighth grader at 103 pounds, a boy about his age with short dreadlocks sat near us sporting a black baseball hat with fourteen orange safety pins tacked on the side.
“What do the pins mean?” I asked.
He looked astonished. “It’s for every pin I have this season.”
Weldon told me repeatedly that I asked dumb wrestling questions.
To me, it seemed as if in every match my sons were proving they were different types of men altogether than the father who left them.
“That’s silly,” Weldon told me later. “You can’t think about anything like that, you can’t be distracted, you have to focus or you lose.”
For Brendan, wrestling transformed him from an ill-at-ease middle schooler tenuous in sports and necessarily suspicious of the social spiderwebs, to a comedian in peak physical shape who dared to prove to himself his own strength. He did imitations of most everyone on the team and the coaches.
For Colin, his first sport of choice had always been football, but during his freshman year, wrestling eclipsed that passion. Colin wrestled only part of two youth seasons in seventh and eighth grades. He won his first match in a pin—I have the photo—and lost the next few. He was not an immediate fan of the sport.
Escape Points Page 3