3/10/21 Learning About High School Wrestling?

     Last weekend I went to two wrestling meets Baby A participated in.  I had no idea what I was looking at.  It turns out Mijo is doing alright, he has won 2 out of 3 matches so far.  I have no idea if they keep track of this like football wins for purposes of competing for District or what else happens, but we are definitely interested now.  I found the best thing to do was to start watching Youtube videos of wrestling matches and maybe a couple of tutorials on the basic rules.  This is helping, I am no longer at a loss, but I still have a long way to go.

    A win comes either by pinning the opponent to the ground, meaning both his back scapula are touching the ground/mat for a full second.  The other way is to win by points.  Points are given for doing certain maneuvers in certain ways, such as bringing your opponent to the ground, off his feet and controlling him from behind gets you two points.  Escaping from that position and back on your feet facing your opponent gets you a point.  There are other ways to score points, but I am still learning.

    I didn't even know wrestling was a big deal, we didn't grow up with wrestling in our school.  Turns out it is a pretty engaging sport and kids seem to get into it from a very early age.  We really didn't let Baby A do any sports when he was very young because he was always such an oversized husky boy.  Football had limits on the size, and since we didn't want to embarrass him, we just kind of ignored everything going on around us until he was in seventh grade.  Once he got to 7th grade, some of his classmates started catching up in size, so he didn't seem like an oversized dude anymore.  Apparently, sports have been a natural fit for our son, he loves competing, and he also seems to like learning these sports

    Wrestling is interesting in that it is not what your mind builds up.  I was imagining a lot of throwing of your opponent and the theatrics that come from WWE wrestling, the kind that made The Rock famous.  So far, I haven't even seen a sleeper hold, or an opponent get lifted and thrown, although that can happen.  There is just a lot of arm usage, holds and take downs to the floor.  The pins don't have to be dramatic like in WWE where the ref counts to three.  In this wrestling, one second seems to be enough to ruin someone's day.  I still have a lot to learn, but anyone can learn by watching a few Youtube videos.