Personal Experience
...d frigid night in February at a school called Southern Regional. Once a year this gathering takes place when the small and the large, the best of the best, come to compete in front thousands of people. I was at the High School Wrestling Regional Championship. At the first weigh-in, everybody gets sized up, and you know who is calm and who is not. Sitting on the couch in the little room stuffed with sixteen wrestlers, there was the one thing standing between me and my goal: Joel Tripani. He was casually stripping down, talking to the refs that I had never seen. I had been here before, so there was no reason to be uptight. There it was: every bead of sweat, every drip of blood, every mile, every push up, every tear, it doesn't go away. When you live for one thing for so long, it doesn't just go away. When you get do far into the season, miles just start running through your head. So when you think of all these things, it's hard to believe that you could fail now. I had been here as a sophomore and now I was back as a junior. I was legitimately the underdog. The whole season Tripani had been the number one wrestler at the weight class and I had always been number two. It is hard to be the underdog. Even with a huge cheering section and all the adrenaline pumping, you still have in the back of your mind that you might not win. The match I had been waiting for the past year was about to begin. I remember watching Tripani stroll leisurely over to the check in table as his name was announced to wrestle. He always thought he was such a big shot and stud. Now it was my turn to be checked in. The roar was unbearable as I was th...