It has been a rough ride, certainly not close to what we saw last year, but I think the overall experience has been good for the wrestling team as a whole. Last year, the team consisted of mainly two guys and maybe three girls. I think because of Covid, we never went to a full tournament like we have already three times this year. Last year, every competition was with 1-2 schools and they were as short handed as we were, so only a handful of wrestling matches occurred, so we never experienced this day to night shenanigans, where we went in the gym at 8:00am and came out when it was already dark. This year, a lot of the school have showed up with mostly full teams and we are doing team competitions where the wins and losses of each weight class count towards point totals and the highest point total team takes the 1st prize home. Our team is still short because of a couple different factors, mostly inexperience being one of them. For some reason, instead of putting as many guys as possible in the varsity team, the coaches have about 7-8 guys fighting on the JV team to get them experience and leaving only about 4 boys on the varsity team. We are never going to win a team battle this way, but individual experience also counts, something we didn't understand until yesterday.
Mijo, being 6-3 going into the meet was given a very good seating and did not have to face any opponents until the third round, but at that point fought a kid that was 9-0, so he was pretty good. Still, he won with a move I hadn't seen Baby A fall to, I think the kid was skilled and pretty strong. We could see the records of the guys he was fighting and although good for us to think we he had an advantage, I don't think it matters in the ring. The second match was with a new kid, he was only 2-1, but he was strong and tall. He had Mijo scrambling until he made a mistake, slipped and our boy pounced on top of him and didn't let go until he got the pin. The third guy was a bit scary looking, all muscle and did not look like the typical heavy, with a little fat on him. He was 10-2 at the start of the day, but after the match he told our boy he was fighting at 219, so I don't know if he was normally a lower class weight kid trying to compete with the heavies. Mijo muscled him into submission in about 29 seconds, it was a little amazing how easy he made it look, considering the other boy looked like he was cur from stone. He was a round away from going for 3rd place, but the last wrestler fought a little dirty, he was punching him in the back of the head with his forearm which we all think should be a penalty of some kind, but it always is allowed. The kid also sucker punched him in the mouth and he was still bleeding from his lips at the end of the match.
There is one more meet before the holidays, next week in Bryan, Texas. I guess we'll see more of the guys from the eastern side of the state, I am guessing more schools from the Houston area. I am totally looking forward to the break, we all need it, we have been going non-stop since the summer, really. We will pick up a couple more tournaments after the Christmas break, and then the whole thing comes to a boil in February with the district, regional, and state meets.
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