I think I can read Mijo pretty good, and I could tell he was not himself yesterday at the tournament in Bryan Texas. Wife and I showed up about the same time they did, although we were not following the bus or anything like that. We had even stopped at Buc-ee's and picked up some morning sandwiches with egg and sausage to eat while we drove. Either way, we try not to get in their way, we did manage to get them an area in the stands for them, all the school will get a big enough area for them to sit together, but this was a slightly different tournament in that the matches were done in four separate buildings. The varsity boys got the main gym with the basketball hoops on the ceiling, and the bleachers all around. The JV boys got a smaller gym, it had basketball rims attached to the ceiling, but the bleachers were quite small, and only along one wall. The girls were in a third gym looking room with high ceilings, but I am not sure it had the basketball rims attached to the ceiling, and the rookie boys were in a big cafeteria type room, but they had three mats, the JV and girls had four mats and the varsity boys had five mats to fight on. It made for a much quicker day, but it also meant we only saw the varsity boys, we weren't going to leave and possibly miss our son's matches to see other kids.
Back to Mijo though, once they got weighed, he is usually fired up and he warms up the team. We saw all the other teams going down and running around the mats and stretching. I yelled at our boy to get them out there a couple of times and he just kept doing with his hand to "wait." He eventually put his shoes on and got down to the gym area, but he wasn't really running around excited. All day long, he was more low energy than what I am used to seeing from him.
He admitted after he was done that he dreaded waking up (he woke up at 2:45 before we even called him), getting on the bus (he said he closed his eyes and opened them and they were arriving), getting there and he was feeling like just giving up in the first match and losing so we could go home faster. Once he felt the arms of the first fighter on him, he remembered he likes to compete and couldn't just give up, but I think his energy hurt him and that is partly why he lost that fourth match to a kid he defeated in like 30 seconds the week before. I always like to remember that these are kids still, and Mijo was saying he wanted to be on Christmas break just relaxing and taking it easy, so yes, I was upset at him because I thought he threw the last match, but I also understand that he has been going hard since the summer and our poor little warrior is tired and needs a break. Here is hoping we can just take a long deep breath in the next two weeks and start the new year revved up and ready to go.
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