Joshua’s wrestling
Time for a break for a minute from the color thing….. Earlier, I posted about Eli’s karate (he’s in 2nd grade, and has earned his yellow belt and two stripes). Well, now time for equal billing for his big brother, Joshua (6th grade). To our combined parental utter astonishment, Joshua announced in early February that he wanted to be on the middle school wrestling team. Up to this point, he has wanted nothing to do with any sport other than skateboarding or riding his bike. To make this even more amazing, Paul was in the top three in Connecticut in high school wrestling (back in the Cretaceous when we were young…). Here is the start of his first match last Saturday…Joshua is on the left, in the red.
Joshua absolutely LOVES wrestling, and it’s so fun to watch Paul teaching Joshua extra moves after practice. It’s a demanding schedule: every single day after school from 3-5 pm for all of February and March, including during winter break/vacation, meets most Saturdays, and a couple Wednesday afternoons, too!
So far, Joshua has won only one exhibition match, but even in the space of one week from the first meet to the second, last Saturday, he improved dramatically. In his first match, he was leading 10 to 4…..right up until he gave his more experienced opponent one opening and got pinned! Oh well…..he’s really doing well no matter what, and is learning and having fun…way cool! In this photo, Joshua is going in to pull his opponent down onto the mat.
Another cool thing that just about blew Paul out of the gym…there are GIRLS (go girls!) on the wrestling team, and they get out there and grapple with whomever is in their weight class. Even more cool, this week THEY WON! against boys their own weight class! Yeeehaw! Things have improved in the past 35 years! Paul keeps saying, I never saw such a thing. Yeeeeeehhhaaaaaawwwww! Girls kick a*s! And Joshua’s cool!
Joshua’s addition: I woulda had the kid on the first match as mom said it was 10-4, I was ahead by 6 and I had the kid pinned for 5 seconds (you need 5) and the ref “apparently..” didn’t see that I had him… oh well… (-L-)
Mom’s note: Joshua did have the other kid nearly pinned, but in the stands we couldn’t tell how much of his shoulders were on the mat, and I guess the ref couldn’t either…Joshua is convinced he did…cool! We have, though, reminded him that it’s not a pin unless the Ref says it’s a pin!