Back in my own high school days I had very little awareness of the wrestling team. They seemed to occupy a spot in the weight room around the same time basketball season was going on, but I never figured out exactly what they were up to. In fact, until last week Id never attended a wrestling match at all so I had no idea what to expect in my first week of covering the sport.
What it turned out to be was an amazing display of athleticism, even to the casual observer. These kids are some of the most highly trained athletes imaginable, dealing with both the physical and psychological rigors of the sport.
High school wrestling matches are divided into two minute periods, which sounds like a short amount of time. I had no idea the amount of stress on the human body that two minutes can inflict. Every single second the athletes are fighting for survival. There are no time-outs, no assistance from teammates, nothing. You are out on an island, grappling against an equally sized human being who has also trained hard for this opportunity.
During the match I watched as headgear was displaced or a nose was bloodied. These incidents caused a short stoppage before resuming action. Athletes came off the mat completely exhausted after each successive match. The wrestlers shook hands and one was declared the winner. It was over all in the span of a few minutes. A months worth of training went into that short span of time.
The other beautiful aspect of wrestling is that there is rarely an unfair loss. Some sports teams can be outplayed and still escape with a victory thanks to a little bit of luck. This happens in soccer all the time but it can happen in many other team sports as well. In wrestling you have nobody to blame but yourself for a loss. You dont train hard enough? You lose. You make one poor decision, one slight turning of the wrist or improper foot position and its over, your opponent takes advantage. Every single, solitary moment on the mat is crucial to the outcome. And if you do wrestle well, you are rewarded immediately. For someone as unaccustomed as I am to witnessing such precise battles, it was enjoyable to watch.
Wrestling tends to be an underpublicized, underappreciated art. There are no professional wrestling leagues, at least, not any real wrestling leagues. The Olympics are the pinnacle of the sport and that does not bring money to the winner. Occasionally a college wrestling star will try his luck at mixed martial arts or ultimate fighting, but those are more severe disciplines. For most wrestlers, all the years of blood, sweat, and tears will end without profiting one penny. Still, for those two minutes each round that you face your opponent, and in many respects yourself, there is glory. Whether five people or 5,000 people are watching, you cant find that same sort of perfect justice anywhere else in life. So now, after years of indifference, I appreciate wrestling.