Triumphant (?) Return

Cale got back on the mat this weekend.  Big weekend for me, I spend a lot of time with Conor's wrestling career because of his success and sometimes I think that Cale feels a little slighted.  Cale has given up other sports to concentrate on wrestling (another topic altogether), Conor still plays football and baseball, both of which I coach him in.  Conor goes on a lot of out of state trips for wrestling, Cale doesn't attend them much.  Cale can still knock the stuffing out of his younger brother on the mat (he thinks, I think, maybe...) but Con gets all the attention.  Yada, yada, yada...it's complicated.  I'm looking forward to seeing him get back to action this weekend and spending some time with him, sans Conor.

Blue "Heaven" Mountain

May 7:  About half way through our two hour drive, the sun was up and the sky was beautiful.  As I rolled down 78 and the tree covered bluffs sped by, I looked at my son asleep in the passenger seat.  We had shared many of these trips over the years and I realized things were about to change.  Next year he would enter high school and most of these trips he would take without me, on a bus with his coach and teammates.  I would be in the stands, of course, but it would all be different.  The natural course of events was upon us

Taking the easy way out...

On a side note, while I was at Conor's freestyle tournament, I kept a close eye on the Junior 171 weight class.  This is the age and weight that Cale will be competing at, he is classified a first year "Junior" as he turned 16 in September.  Conor is a "Schoolboy" although he competed as a "Cadet" at the tournament.  Cale last wrestled at about 150 in the preseason this year.  After his knee surgery he has put on about 15 pounds or so.

Swimming in the deep end...

This past weekend Conor competed in his first freestyle competition.  He has practiced the style before, but this is the first year he has had time to actually enter some competitions on weekends.  Although this tournament was a big one for freestyle, it is still offseason so the competitors are limited.  In order to get some matches in Con wrestles up an age group, which may help him a bit as he prepares for varsity competition next year.

He gets to the mat for his first match and sees his first opponent.  "Oh crap, he's jacked," Conor mumbles as he slips up the straps on his red singlet.  Not sure if "crap" was the exact word that came out of his mouth or not.  After a few meager words of encouragement, I pat him on the rear and send him out to earn his fate.

Update on "semantics"

Conor's baseball commitments are not as great this year.  He is a baseball "14" which is an in between year for Legion ball.  His Legion prep team of last year has reformed as an AAU team, which requires far less of a commitment.  He also does inhouse, but at his age, his inhouse team may only have a couple of practices for the entire year and most of the kids will only show up to 60% to 80% of the games.  So baseball-wise, this is FAR less of a commitment than has been required of him in the past.

So last week, he tells me that he wants to start going to wrestling practice with his older brother.