Personal Narrative: A Career In Wrestling

“You can quit when you are finished.” My dad has been saying this my entire life. Everytime he said that I took it to heart because, it is a powerful saying if you really and truly follow it. I had followed that saying my whole life relatively easily, until my freshman year of wrestling. During that season I was tested in how much I really believed in what my dad had been saying. My career in wrestling all started in eighth grade, after months of wrestling parents and wrestlers urging me and pushing me to join I gave in and went out for the junior high wrestling team. So, when wrestling season rolled around I signed up and showed up for practice ready to go. The season was great; I was with my friends doing as we pleased during practice
As the wrestling season approached one of the wrestlers kept asking me if I was going to wrestle and he was always disappointed when I would say no, but he would continue to ask me until I agreed to at least come to a few open mats, before the actual season starts. At the open mats I realized how little I actually knew about wrestling, but that fact aside it was fun. We would play dodgeball as part of our warm-up and as our cool down at the end, I foolishly thought that was going to be an everyday occurrence during the regular season, so I went out for the regular season, and received quite the reality check. I thought “You know what? I could go out for the heck of it and breeze through behind the scenes without having to put forth too much effort.” In the sport of wrestling there is no behind the scenes, when you step out onto the mat it is you and the wrestler across from you and no one else. The first few weeks, in any sport, are designed to weed out the weak and condition the athletes, it was at this time that I realized how hard this was going to be and I so badly wanted to quit. I would go home with a crushed feeling and with a look of despair on my