This week, Mama was home (last week she had been at a conference, so she wasn't here to put her foot down). Apart from Mijo getting over his cold, mostly. We also limited the number of kids who spent the night, we had a loose cannon last week, the new wrestler, who just has too much energy and kept waking up the kids trying to be funny. Wife then scheduled his hair braiding for a much earlier time, she was able to do it after school, we didn't even have to go to her home, it was done at school before 3:00pm, they had an early release. The final thing was to make sure and feed them early, we picked up our three wrestlers that were sleeping here, fed them after school, around 5:00pm and got home by 6:00pm. I was ready for a nap, and to my surprise, when I woke up at 9:00pm, everyone in the house was asleep. We all slept until 3:30am, then got up and we got the boys to school before the bus left at 4:15am.
We showed up at the tournament about 8:30am, there was no reason to follow the bus, spectators weren't going to be let in until 8:30am, when the doors open to the public, or so the sign said. It was a huge airport hangar sized building, and supposedly around 1400 wrestlers were participating, so there were tons of kids everywhere. Mijo came and said hi while we were in line to buy the souvenir hoodies and he said he felt good and rested. He didn't fight for a couple hours after the thing started, but he didn't look frustrated, and he seemed to be in good spirits.
It was a tough first match, but he won by a 1-0 decision, scoring the sole point on an escape. The second match was relatively easy, scoring a pin in around a minute. There was not much time between that match and the following three, but his third opponent was the eventual winner who took first in his bracket. I will say that Mijo had him on his back for several seconds, but the ref never called the pin, that is the way things go. Mijo was impressed, and he never is, but said "that guy was fucking strong, he bench-pressed me off of him." Mijo had the advantage in points, up 5-3, but with about 30 seconds, the guy tripped him up and got a pin. He then had two more matches towards the whole event seeming to wrap up within about an hour of each other. He fought the same kid from the first round to make it to the 3rd place match, then he beat another kid who Wife said had an all-state patch on his jacket. This kid was big and strong too, honestly, they are all bigger than Mijo, but he holds his own well.
Mijo ended up winning third place, which is the first time he has placed this high. He won 4 out of 5 matches for the day. He blamed it all on feeling well rested and if this is what it takes, he'll go to sleep early every time. I hope this is the secret to get him on the podium every time.
No comments:
Post a Comment