Saturday, December 30, 2006

2nd Place at the Tiger Youth Wrestling Tournament

Morgan got a huge boost in confidence that he desperately needed after a hard tournament a couple of weeks ago at West Marshall. He learned tonight that wrestling is at least 60% mental. The first match he wrestled the guy who would eventually win. Each bracket was called up to the holding area so the boys had a chance to talk before wrestling. The kid he first wrestled from S.E. Warren told him that he had been wrestling six years - which completely psyched Morgan out. He admitted that he thought he would lose when he stepped out onto the mat. It showed.

We had a great father to son talk, and gave him a couple of pre-match pointers. The first is not to talk with your opponent until after you wrestle him - not to be rude, but he needed to be thinking about the match. The second is that wrestling isn't a "nice" sport. It's rough! He needed to be aggressive and go after his opponent. The next two kids he wrestled (they do four man round robins) were from the Valley Tiger Youth Wrestling Club - one was a former teammate. The second guy he wrestled was bigger and older, but Morgan pinned him in 23 seconds. His last match he wrestled what had to be one of the most fundamentally sound matches I have seem him wrestle yet, and pinned his former teammate in the 2nd period. So he took second. He was so excited! We were too! So after a rocky start, his record improved to 2-4.


Morgan's next tournament is Saturday, January 6, 2007 at the Little Warhawk Wrestling Tournament at S.E. Warren High School in Liberty Center.

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