You see, Wrestling isn't a sport. It's a lifestyle. You don't wrestle for a season, you wrestle for life. And in high school, Wrestling was literally my life. Before I talk about wrestling, however, let's time travel back to the beginning of my freshman year of high school. In comes this 105 pound little asian boy. And even though he has hardly ever touched a football in his life, he joined the football team in an attempt to make new friends and get stronger. Long story short, he ended up as a third string DB, never playing on the field and always getting belittled by teammates and even coaches. His life changed when Coach mead came during the last day of Football season to see whether anyone would be interested in joining the Wrestling Team. That moment became the start of a journey from a weak, shy boy into the confident man I am today. Below is a personal account of the ups and downs of my path to greatness.
Freshman Year of Wrestling:
Damn, this is where it all started. You see, I was never the talented off the bat kind of person. In my senior year, one of my couches described me as the athlete that started in the bottom of the staircase in the beginning, but made huge leaps by the time he passed everyone. Most my friends were in wrestling, and so I finally felt like I was in a true family. We would all train outside for conditioning to show the rest of the school how badass we were. This is when I was also introduced to Sensei Brezhnev and the Dynamo Club, which was a Russian Combat Sambo and Judo team that met 3x a week after wrestling practices. I did make pretty big waves in the first tournament of the year though. I won most outstanding Freshman Wrestler in the Chaminade team duals. I took a big step and won one match during the Varsity BIV tournaments as well. My league record was whatever though. By the time league finals came around. I wrestled in the Freshman-Sophomore Division where I became the runner up. The most important part of this year were honestly the new people I met. The captains -Dylan, Ralph, and Matt - were extremely inspirational to me (So inspirational that I even wrote about them in my English essay on "who do you look up to"). I even started to go to practice open maps with them after summer came. And in spite of wrestling being that super hard and aggressive sport, all I could remember that year was that I was sincerely having fun.
Sophomore Year of Wrestling:
Without a doubt, Sophomore year was my biggest year for improvement. After having come short the previous year, and given a lot of expectations, I wanted to make waves this year. I had one goal in mind for the year - become the first Beverly wrestler to make CIF as a sophomore. Right after freshman year, I signed up for West Coast Wrestling Camp. There I was thought under MMA legends Mark Munoz, Urijah Faber, and many more. It was a brutal week of beach sandbag training, nonstop wrestling, and constantly being pushed to the limit every hour. It's not even a joke when I say i put blood,sweat, and tears into this camp. But despite all the physical demands this camp asked for, it was really the mental toughness that stuck in my mind.
After coming home from West Coast, I also found out that we were getting a new coach. His name was Ryan Faintich. And at the time I didn't know it, but this man would become the biggest role model I look up to. He is the main reason why I really upped my game that year. After giving me a whole new arsenal of attacks, namely the ankle pick on neutral, the leg ride on top, and the granby series on bottom, I was beating everyone I was afraid of from freshman year and was in the clear for becoming league champion. Or at least I thought so. A couple of days before league finals, coach had told me that Jordan Gurrola, a state qualifier from North Torrance was cutting down all the way to 120. And even though I knew I had no chance of winning, I wrestled as if it was just any other practice match. And even though I got pinned, I knew I had laid everything out on the mat.
And despite not becoming league champion like I thought it would, being the runner-up still meant a ticket to the CIF regional tournament. I had reached my goal. But it wasn't over. I still had to compete. I took it match by match, until suddenly, before I even realized it, my last match in day one decided if I could go on to wrestling for Top Twelve or day 2 of the tournament. In a very intense and close match, I had managed to squeeze out an 11-10 victory, and became the first Beverly sophomore wrestler to have ever made the second day of CIF.
Junior Year - "Sing About me, I'm Dying of Thirst"
And while Sophomore Year held the biggest improvements, Junior Year carried the least. Before I explain, let's backtrack. Junior Year started off great. I went to a bunch of open mat tournaments and practices in the summer. And in terms of tournaments, I was placing higher in the tournaments from the year before. I had two goals in mind the whole year: Become league champ and qualify for masters. Everything was going well until League Finals hit. Mark Beal, a Masters Qualifier from the year before, cut down to 132. At that moment, despite the tangible successes I had the whole year, I felt that I never even improved from the year before. I felt like I plateaued having placed the same place in league as last year. It gets worse though - in the second day of CIF, I was eliminated from the tournament after losing my second match in the consolation quarter finals. And even though I got injured with a dislocated scapula, I should have never get in the position of injuring me in the first place. What I mean by that is in Wrestling, I've learned that you can never blame anyone but yourself for the outcome of a match. After that match, I ran outside the building, where I found a quiet place to sit down and cry my eyes out. I didn't know what to feel honestly. After working so hard for an entire year, I ended up right where I began.
I've been talking so much about myself that I forgot to talk about my team! Junior year became the first year that I became captain along with Bram and David. And while Beverly has historically always been penultimate or last in league standings, that year became the first year Beverly put itself in the running to become league team champions. In a super tight match against the last league team duals though, we weren't able to defend our home gym against South Torrance. But still, it felt incredibly satisfying to beat teams who we haven't beaten since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.
Senior Year - "Now or Never"
Right after Junior year ended, I went on the one of the coolest summer spots I've experienced - Mexico. Yep you got it! Mexico, Missouri! Granby Wrestling Camp, named after the wrestling move granby roll, had a five day wrestling camp in Missouri taught by the Old Dominion coaches and team. And besides learning some pretty cool technique and getting to work with some D1 collegiate wrestlers, I also had a great time with my coach and teammates. We went to Wash U in St. Louis, spelunked a hidden cave, and drifted through some rapids during a rainstorm (Johnson's Shut-ins).
But when the school year started, it wasn't fun and games anymore. 3 years of expectations and pressure were piling up on my shoulders and I could feel it. There was this plaque in the wrestling room that had the names of all the program's biggest champions. It taunted me. It looked at me everyday I came in the room and told me that I would be a failure if I couldn't get up on that plaque. By this time though, I was the only senior left on the team. All the friends I started out with and made during Freshman Year were burnt out, leaving me to be the only leader among a team of mostly young freshman. This meant not having anyone to really challenge me in the room. Nonetheless, I had to really step it up to make sure I make masters that year. Hours and hours of outside practices, post-practice workouts on the track, and weekend training. I'd even have to spend my lunches in the library just to make sure I had time to train later. Balancing wrestling with 5 AP classes and college apps made it even harder.
Remember that thing I talked about during freshman year where I just wrestled to have fun. Well, it turns out I was right all along. But It wasn't until the very end that I realized having fun was honestly the key to winning matches.
Freshman Year of Wrestling:
Damn, this is where it all started. You see, I was never the talented off the bat kind of person. In my senior year, one of my couches described me as the athlete that started in the bottom of the staircase in the beginning, but made huge leaps by the time he passed everyone. Most my friends were in wrestling, and so I finally felt like I was in a true family. We would all train outside for conditioning to show the rest of the school how badass we were. This is when I was also introduced to Sensei Brezhnev and the Dynamo Club, which was a Russian Combat Sambo and Judo team that met 3x a week after wrestling practices. I did make pretty big waves in the first tournament of the year though. I won most outstanding Freshman Wrestler in the Chaminade team duals. I took a big step and won one match during the Varsity BIV tournaments as well. My league record was whatever though. By the time league finals came around. I wrestled in the Freshman-Sophomore Division where I became the runner up. The most important part of this year were honestly the new people I met. The captains -Dylan, Ralph, and Matt - were extremely inspirational to me (So inspirational that I even wrote about them in my English essay on "who do you look up to"). I even started to go to practice open maps with them after summer came. And in spite of wrestling being that super hard and aggressive sport, all I could remember that year was that I was sincerely having fun.
Sophomore Year of Wrestling:
Without a doubt, Sophomore year was my biggest year for improvement. After having come short the previous year, and given a lot of expectations, I wanted to make waves this year. I had one goal in mind for the year - become the first Beverly wrestler to make CIF as a sophomore. Right after freshman year, I signed up for West Coast Wrestling Camp. There I was thought under MMA legends Mark Munoz, Urijah Faber, and many more. It was a brutal week of beach sandbag training, nonstop wrestling, and constantly being pushed to the limit every hour. It's not even a joke when I say i put blood,sweat, and tears into this camp. But despite all the physical demands this camp asked for, it was really the mental toughness that stuck in my mind.
After coming home from West Coast, I also found out that we were getting a new coach. His name was Ryan Faintich. And at the time I didn't know it, but this man would become the biggest role model I look up to. He is the main reason why I really upped my game that year. After giving me a whole new arsenal of attacks, namely the ankle pick on neutral, the leg ride on top, and the granby series on bottom, I was beating everyone I was afraid of from freshman year and was in the clear for becoming league champion. Or at least I thought so. A couple of days before league finals, coach had told me that Jordan Gurrola, a state qualifier from North Torrance was cutting down all the way to 120. And even though I knew I had no chance of winning, I wrestled as if it was just any other practice match. And even though I got pinned, I knew I had laid everything out on the mat.
And despite not becoming league champion like I thought it would, being the runner-up still meant a ticket to the CIF regional tournament. I had reached my goal. But it wasn't over. I still had to compete. I took it match by match, until suddenly, before I even realized it, my last match in day one decided if I could go on to wrestling for Top Twelve or day 2 of the tournament. In a very intense and close match, I had managed to squeeze out an 11-10 victory, and became the first Beverly sophomore wrestler to have ever made the second day of CIF.
Junior Year - "Sing About me, I'm Dying of Thirst"
And while Sophomore Year held the biggest improvements, Junior Year carried the least. Before I explain, let's backtrack. Junior Year started off great. I went to a bunch of open mat tournaments and practices in the summer. And in terms of tournaments, I was placing higher in the tournaments from the year before. I had two goals in mind the whole year: Become league champ and qualify for masters. Everything was going well until League Finals hit. Mark Beal, a Masters Qualifier from the year before, cut down to 132. At that moment, despite the tangible successes I had the whole year, I felt that I never even improved from the year before. I felt like I plateaued having placed the same place in league as last year. It gets worse though - in the second day of CIF, I was eliminated from the tournament after losing my second match in the consolation quarter finals. And even though I got injured with a dislocated scapula, I should have never get in the position of injuring me in the first place. What I mean by that is in Wrestling, I've learned that you can never blame anyone but yourself for the outcome of a match. After that match, I ran outside the building, where I found a quiet place to sit down and cry my eyes out. I didn't know what to feel honestly. After working so hard for an entire year, I ended up right where I began.
I've been talking so much about myself that I forgot to talk about my team! Junior year became the first year that I became captain along with Bram and David. And while Beverly has historically always been penultimate or last in league standings, that year became the first year Beverly put itself in the running to become league team champions. In a super tight match against the last league team duals though, we weren't able to defend our home gym against South Torrance. But still, it felt incredibly satisfying to beat teams who we haven't beaten since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.
Senior Year - "Now or Never"
Right after Junior year ended, I went on the one of the coolest summer spots I've experienced - Mexico. Yep you got it! Mexico, Missouri! Granby Wrestling Camp, named after the wrestling move granby roll, had a five day wrestling camp in Missouri taught by the Old Dominion coaches and team. And besides learning some pretty cool technique and getting to work with some D1 collegiate wrestlers, I also had a great time with my coach and teammates. We went to Wash U in St. Louis, spelunked a hidden cave, and drifted through some rapids during a rainstorm (Johnson's Shut-ins).
But when the school year started, it wasn't fun and games anymore. 3 years of expectations and pressure were piling up on my shoulders and I could feel it. There was this plaque in the wrestling room that had the names of all the program's biggest champions. It taunted me. It looked at me everyday I came in the room and told me that I would be a failure if I couldn't get up on that plaque. By this time though, I was the only senior left on the team. All the friends I started out with and made during Freshman Year were burnt out, leaving me to be the only leader among a team of mostly young freshman. This meant not having anyone to really challenge me in the room. Nonetheless, I had to really step it up to make sure I make masters that year. Hours and hours of outside practices, post-practice workouts on the track, and weekend training. I'd even have to spend my lunches in the library just to make sure I had time to train later. Balancing wrestling with 5 AP classes and college apps made it even harder.
Remember that thing I talked about during freshman year where I just wrestled to have fun. Well, it turns out I was right all along. But It wasn't until the very end that I realized having fun was honestly the key to winning matches.