[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
. I heard that every year, Jay says. I couldn t make the jumpto 125, and then everybody was gonna tear me up at 152.Samethis year. Does that bother you? I ask.Jay shrugs. People like to talk. Wrestling, as Doug Streicher often says, is a motivate-your-self-any-way-you-can kind of a sport.They don t stay up nightsinventing cool new cheers for the wrestling team.It isn t a lonelyexistence so much as a select one, and the wrestling coaches andparents and fans use that fact as a sort of proof of virtue: wres-tlers are better than other athletes because their drive is so pure,because their pursuit is so solitary.So few people outside theirclosed circle of fellow wrestlers could ever even begin to under-stand the sacrifices they make in order to simply get on the mat,much less compete and win.It is on Mondays that wrestlers who ve allowed themselves a 48 / FOUR DAYS TO GLORYlittle of the good life over the weekend begin getting back downto their target weight and by good life I mean an actual Sat-urday night, post-tournament dinner that isn t missing any of thefun parts, and by getting back down I mean the energy-sapping,soul-diminishing art of cutting weight.It is the tradition-boundpractice, the most delicate balancing act that any of these athletesmay ever attempt, walking the line between light enough andstrong enough.It does not separate the men from the boys; itreveals who has the slightest business even being out there in thefirst place.Dan LeClere s mother, Mary, long ago accepted the factthat during wrestling season, she has to cook differently than shemight like to.Her menu consists of a fair amount of lean meat,lots of green vegetables and not many potatoes, which don t geta big reception at our table, Mary says with a smile.It is the wayof the world for any wrestler cutting weight, and Dan made hispeace with it some time ago.For Dan, hunger equals anger, andanger, the kind of anger he might never express any other way, isalmost perfectly suited to his role on the mat. You get used tobeing hungry, he says. I can live with that. In fact, what Dandoes is control it, harness the hunger.He thinks about dominat-ing his opponent on a Saturday afternoon, and he thinks aboutthe nice meal controlled portions but good food that he willallow himself on Saturday night.After all, Monday, at that point,feels like a month away.The greatest shooter on a basketball team has four courtmates, and thoseplayers need to produce something of at least distraction valuewhile they re out there.Otherwise, it s just Allen Iverson scoring43 points for Philly in a loss.But wrestling, like swimming or ten-nis or cross-country, is one of those disciplines in which the wayto help one s team is almost exclusively to win for oneself at A Specific Desperation / 49the same time.When Jay Borschel pins somebody, as he has donealmost a hundred times in his high school career, his team gets6 points.If an opponent forfeits to him, it s 6 points.A technicalfall (a win by more than 15 points) is worth 5; a major decision(by 8 points) is worth 4, and a decision 3.It is not tangential;most of the time, in duals and tournaments in which every pointis counted, it matters.But there is nobody on his team who canhelp Jay get that pin or that major, unless screaming hard from anearby metal chair counts.(Most wrestlers say they hear almostnothing but the white noise ringing in their ears during a matchanyway).The sport just doesn t function that way.No one canmake a move for Jay; he has to make it himself.No one can rollJay off his back; he has to escape himself.He is, at the end of the day, responsible for his own self, thewrestler.And, as Jay has learned the hard way, he cannot help histeammates, either.He cannot help them become people who want to get bet-ter if they aren t.He can t help them work harder if they won t.He can lead, and he can exhort, and he can do all of the thingsthat he does from time to time in the Linn-Mar wrestling roomto try to create an atmosphere of fiery effort and great results.Butif, in the end, most of his teammates just don t give enough of adamn to get better, well, that s where the line gets drawn.And so,this year, it has been.Jay s wrestling teammates also used to be his closest friendsand most admired classmates, but, looking back, he sees that hewas living a dream.The Linn-Mar teams of his first couple of highschool seasons were almost a mirage, they were so good; Streicher,just a few years into his tenure, had imposed such a change on theprogram by the time Jay arrived that the Lions were producingstate qualifiers and tournament and dual winners at an impressiverate.In Jay s freshman year, he not only won the state title at 103pounds but was part of a winning team.Linn-Mar sent a raft of 50 / FOUR DAYS TO GLORYwrestlers to Des Moines, finished third overall in Class 3A, thenwent on to wrestle the State Duals.Streicher, himself a formerstate prep champion and an NCAA All-American for Iowa, wasnamed Coach of the Year.It felt like the best time in the world tobe a wrestler at Linn-Mar.And it was illusory, or at least temporary.Those early teamswere loaded up with juniors and seniors who had come of ageand quality together, part of the first real wave of talent that wasshaped and molded by Streicher.Back then, Jay, despite his ob-vious command of the sport, was almost along for the ride.Hesurfed the waves of enthusiasm of his older colleagues in the prac-tice room, drafted off their effort until he developed his ownsustainable ethic.It was easy to want to go for it, because so manyother guys older guys, wrestlers worth respecting were goingfor it at the same time.What they lacked in Jay s natural affinityfor the sport they compensated for by their willingness to bru-talize themselves for the sake of improvement.They had fun byworking hard.Their idea of a great weekend was to send morethan half the team to State.It was cool to be wrestling for theLinn-Mar Lions.Then it ended.Trickled down, really.From that gusher ofperformance in Jay s freshman year, the numbers began, verygradually, to dwindle in the wrestling room
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]