Section One Mom Defines Wrestling and Each Athlete's Individual Commitment
What upsets me is all the negative things people are saying about section 1 wrestling. We have, had, and will continue to have some very talented wrestlers in section 1. We will have great years and we will have years that many teams need to rebuild. Sections like 11, 5, and 8 breed a ton of year round wrestlers.
We don’t. We play football, basketball, lacrosse etc. Section 1 will always have a bunch of kids who are willing to just wrestle and participate in nothing else, and more power to those kids for being committed to just wrestling. Wrestling is an amazing sport for those who love it, but for many kids they end up wrestling because they were not good enough to make another sports team.
All the negativity that parents and coaches have been expressing, in my opinion, is a cut down to our athletes, our sons, our coaches and us as parents. Private club wrestling can be expensive year round, for those who can afford it, great, open mats are great too, but even with all that, we still and should not compare ourselves to all these other powerhouse sections.
Every year we should continue to offer what we can for the wrestlers who want to go that extra mile, and every year we should go up to states and wrestle to the best to of OUR ability. Up at states it is an open draw, if you get lucky and get a great draw you can place.
If you get unlucky and get a tough draw, well you still have to wrestle your heart out and hope you walk away with a couple of wins. Even though we didn’t have a lot of kids place this year at states we had a lot of kids who worked really hard at the state practices and then went up to Albany and wrestled there butts off.
They never gave up, they left it all on the mat and they showed tremendous heart. 9 kids made it to the second day at states, but who would even know that, many of them had very tough medal round matches in very deep weight classes. Our sons who lost that round and just missed placing deserve a lot more respect than what people have written on your blog.
Someone on your blog wrote that he was disgusted and embarrassed at the way our boys wrestled and represented section 1 up in Albany. Winning and placing at states is not the only thing that determines a great wrestler. I am sure that the parents and coaches in section 11, 8 or 5 win or lose would never belittle there kids, coaches or wrestling programs.
It is a shame to see that there are coaches, parents and even kids blaming each other…for what? Because we didn’t have a state champ this year or 4 finalist or 10 state placers. For the past 10 years, section 1 has been averaging about 7th or 8th place up at states. Some years we will do better and some years we won’t. This year, Section 1 sent their best wrestlers to states and they did the best that they could do.
I think it takes a lot of courage to go out for a sport like wrestling. Wrestling is probably the toughest sport around. Whether our kids win or lose the fact that they made a huge commitment and never quit says a lot and for that alone they should be praised.
I know that there are so many section 1 coaches and parents out there who are extremely committed to their kids, to there wrestling programs and most of all to helping Section 1 reach their potential and be successful. In fact many of them even volunteer a lot of there time in the off season.
They deserve credit and a big "Thank You." To those people in our section who have expressed on the blog or in the Journal news that our section is a disgrace, you guys need to take a more positive approach. We want more student athletes to go out for wrestling. We don’t want to scare them away.
After reading the Journal News today and reading what people have written on the blog, if I were a kid I would think twice. Who would want to wrestle for a section 1? Being hungry to be great is one thing, but let’s be humble about it. Kids need confidence and they need to feel great about what they are truly able to accomplish during their wrestling career.
I would like share with you something that Marc wrote. This was the ending to his speech that he delivered last night at the North Rockland Wrestling Dinner. Hope you enjoy it.
By: Liz Zurla
Back to Section One Articles
| 
