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For Wisconsin Wrestling Online
The Kehls’ Most
Excellent Wrestling Adventure
Part III: Turning the
Corner
I suspect that it came in the mail, but somewhere toward the end of
his fifth grade school year, Jason (Jay) came up with this flyer for
some kind of so-called day camp. It ran from something like 10:00 am
to 4:00 pm, with a break for lunch; I think it was for a week. Once
again he totally surprised me when he asked if he could attend. What
was going through his head? He told me that none of his friends were
interested. Here you had this young kid from a small town, who had
just finished fifth grade, asking to spend all day, in a strange
town, with a bunch of other kids and coaches he had never met before
in his life, to work on a sport that he self-admittedly sucked at!
It did occur to me that maybe he just liked scaring himself; perhaps
to him wrestling was a thrill sport where he got an adrenalin rush
akin to ski diving. On the other hand, he never acted particularly
excited. He just went about the whole thing in a rather
business-like fashion; it was kind of like he was just going off to
work.
Adding to this (for me) preternatural phenomenon was the fact that
this camp was to be held in the field house at Waukesha South High
School. I had not set foot in the place since I had sat in the
bleachers as a spectator (long story) at my graduation. I did walk
to the corner and look at the blank wall where the results of the
physical fitness testing had once been posted.
As far as making the twice daily 50 mile round trip to Waukesha
went, it was not that bad. At the time, our biggest customer’s
warehouse was in Waukesha, anyway. We really only had to make one
special trip per day: To pick Jay up in the afternoon when he was
finished. Every morning of that week I would make two deliveries:
Tomatoes for the Sentry stores and Jason to wrestling practice. He
seemed to enjoy it and said that he was learning a lot.
When the start of his sixth grade season rolled around he told me
that his goal was to get to the WWF State Tournament by the time he
was in eighth grade. This was the first time that he had ever
verbalized any kind of goal; as usual with Jay, it came out of the
blue. I was becoming more and more pleased at the deliberate way he
was going about his wrestling. As I was very deliberately staying
out of the way, whatever he decided to do was very much fine with
me.
It was about that time that I made the conscious decision to confine
myself to a support role when it came to wrestling. I figured that
being a parent afforded me more than enough opportunity to coach my
kids in the life skills that should be my primary responsibility.
Since by this time he already knew more about the technical aspects
of wrestling than I did, I saw no reason to horn in on what was
clearly evolving into his business.
One day I took him aside and somewhat ceremoniously told him that I
was not going to coach his wrestling and that he would have to seek
that out for himself and figure out what coaches and coaching styles
suited him best. I told him that I would support him in any way I
could; basically, that I would haul him around, and pay for things
like camps. Also, since I knew a thing or ten about weight training,
when the time came, I would be his lifting coach. He seemed pleased
that I was smart enough to relegate myself to what were obviously
the most appropriate roles.
The sixth grade season started routinely, without any indication
that it wouldn’t be more of the same: A lot of struggle without a
whole lot outwardly to show for it. Jason had seemed to be getting
better towards the end of the previous year, but he still was having
problems scoring enough points to win, especially from his feet.
Fortunately, Mike Joswowski, whose son Adam Lesser was the club’s
best third grader, was still stopping in and helping out as much as
his very busy schedule would allow. Mike was in his first year as
head coach at Waterford. It’s probably an understatement to say that
Mike and the way he coached were controversial; polarizing would be
a more accurate description of the wildly divergent opinions that
the other parents held of him. However, Jason loved the guy; he
missed him when Mike couldn’t make the practices.
Mike was a two time state qualifier (1981, 1982) from Waterford. In
his words, he was an under achiever in high school who did not have
the confidence to wrestle up to his ability when it really counted:
“I would choke in the big matches when wrestling the guys with the
big reputations.” From my perspective, Mike’s (what other people saw
as) over the top intensity was born of his desperate passion to not
let the kids’ he coached suffer the same ignominious fate that he
did in high school. Sometimes this insistent intensity would appear
like he was trying to make sure that his kids were more afraid of
him than either their opponent or their fear of making mistakes.
Outwardly, Coach Mike and Jason appeared to have nothing in common.
While Mike was very animated, and aggressive; Jason was quiet,
reserved, and very self-disciplined. However, they both had a
burning intensity that the other seemed to understand and
appreciate. After one particularly grueling “after hours” session
with Mike, Jason revealed to me profoundly more than he could have
ever intended when he said, “You know, Dad, the thing I like about
Mike is that when he compliments you, you know you did it right. I
hate it when people give me compliments when I know I sucked.”
Up to this time, Jason seemed to have developed an aversion to
shooting takedowns. The previous season, Mike had made it a point to
get him to take shots. We had a minor celebration when Jay finally
succeeded in scoring on a nice single. However, better opponents
were so good at countering anything he could manage at his current
skill level that he clearly wanted to rely on escapes and bottom
moves.
I concluded that I had exacerbated that tendency by trying to
simplify things by encouraging him to concentrate first on the
fundamentals of his stance. He found that if his stance was perfect,
and that if he kept moving and circling like he was taught, that it
was almost impossible for even the best guys to score on him. It
seemed that he gave up most of his points, and therefore suffered
most of his losses, by getting out of position and making himself
vulnerable to counters of sloppy takedown attempts.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. We were at a tournament
where Jason had just lost by one point, 0-1, to Mikey Iverson, who
was one of many of a new generation of Stoughton Wrestling
Iverson’s. The two other kids in the round robin bracket came up to
Jay and fussed over the fact that he had “almost beat” the dreaded
Mikey. They were very impressed with how good Jay must be. When they
left, Jay looked out of the corner of his eye and kind of smirked,
“Well, that did feel better than getting teched or pinned; but
losing is losing. I guess I gotta figure out a way to score a few
points.”
That season we kind of turned the corner into what I considered hard
core: wrestling in 40 or more matches. For the first time, we even
did the two per weekend thing. He won his first tournament; then he
won a couple more on his way to winning approximately two-thirds of
his matches.
That season the closest WWF Regional was just down the road at
Elkhorn High School. With the luck of the draw, he got Hank Peters
for his first match. In a far cry from his 15-0 thumping by Hank
back in fourth grade, he fought hard, but lost a very close, low
scoring match by one or two points. Rather than dwelling on his bad
luck at getting stuck with heavy favorite Hank, on Hank’s home mat,
Jason seemed resolved to march through the very large bracket. He
did just that, mostly pinning his way through another five or six
matches all the way back to second place and a trip to the state
tournament. After one very subdued fist pump after winning the final
match, he walked off the mat looking serenely satisfied that he had
realized his goal a full two years early. He had turned the corner.
Mike
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