I Don’t Know How to Parent a Wrestler
I thought districts was an emotional day. I was wrong. Regionals was something else entirely — the kind of day that leaves you wrung out on the drive home, running the whole thing back in your head in silence.
My son is going to Hershey. Let me get to that. But first, the part that nearly broke both of us.
The Quarterfinals
The bracket was set, and there it was. First thing in the morning, quarterfinals — my son against a good friend. A kid he trains with. A kid he knows inside and out, and who knows him just as well.
There is no good way to wrestle a good friend in a tournament. Someone goes home. Someone doesn’t. The bracket doesn’t care how close you are off the mat.
He lost. A tough match against a kid he respects, who knows every move he’s got because they’ve drilled together for years. It wasn’t a blowout — it was a real match — but he was on the wrong side of it when the whistle blew.
Watching your kid walk off the mat after a loss like that is hard in a way that’s difficult to describe. It’s not just a loss to a random opponent. There’s a layer of complicated on top of it — the friendship, the shared practices, all of it. He was devastated. And his day wasn’t over.
The Dig
Here’s where I have to just step back and say: I don’t know where he found it.
After that loss, he had to turn around and wrestle the consolation bracket with a shot at third place — and a state qualifier spot — still on the line. The margin between going home and going to Hershey was four more wins. After losing to a good friend. As a freshman.
He dug deep. That’s the only way to say it. Match by match, he wrestled his way back through the consolation bracket with a focus I didn’t expect from a kid who’d just had his heart handed to him in the quarterfinals. Every time I thought he might fold, he didn’t.
He won the match for third place.
Third place at regionals. He’s qualified for the PIAA State Championships.
The Moment That Got Me
I’ve been trying to write this paragraph for ten minutes.
When my son won that final match to qualify for states — still riding the emotional whiplash of the morning — that good friend was right there. The same kid who beat him in the quarterfinals was on his feet, the loudest person in the gym, genuinely losing his mind with excitement for my son.
That’s the part that got me. Not even the qualification, as incredible as that is. It was watching two kids — competitors who had just wrestled each other — celebrating together like it was the only thing that mattered. That friend helped pull him out of the funk that loss had put him in. That’s a good friend. That’s what this sport builds.
Wrestling builds that. I don’t know how, but it does.
For the Parents
My wife and I were exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with being on our feet all day. Emotional exhaustion is different. Watching your kid absorb a gut punch and then have to perform anyway — twice — while you sit in the stands completely powerless to help is its own particular kind of grueling.
We didn’t say much on the way home. We didn’t need to.
Next Stop: Hershey
The PIAA State Championships are March 5-7 at the GIANT Center in Hershey. My freshman son will be on that mat at 121.
I don’t have expectations. I don’t have predictions. I have a kid who just showed me what he’s made of at regionals, and I can’t wait to watch him compete on the biggest stage in Pennsylvania high school wrestling.
Whatever happens in Hershey, he’s already earned it.
Let’s go. 🙂