There are many tournaments throughout a season, but only a few championships and those are the ones that truly matter: League, City, CIF, Masters, State. I’ve coached in my wrestling career wrestlers who have achieved all of those. I’ve coached many more who were not champions but placed as well. And I was thinking today about what sets apart those who place and those who become champions. One can place at all of those with talent developed over time, one can place with unusual strength or conditioning, but to be a champion one needs all those and an additional secret ingredient: passion.
What do I mean by passion? Not the kind of passion that one feels about something sometimes. Not a “like” or “love”, but a need. This “need” was explained very well by a State and Boys National Champion Ian Baker of La Costa Canyon. ” I didn’t just want to be a champion, I needed to be a champion.”
All who achieve that status during that season or over the course of those seasons had to have a non stop mania over the goal. They would wake up at 3am and go work out or run. They would strap on weights for their runs. They would have a goal to finish in sprints first and be at the top of the hill first. Every single thing they did was that championship. When they lost a match, even when it wasn’t significant, even when it was to someone clearly much better than them, they felt crushed as if it was the championship.
To be a champion one has to decide that this is how they will make their mark. This is what they have to do. They will battle an overtime or one point win. They will come back from a deficit in third period with a pin. They will do whatever it takes in every match to get the result. Because in wrestling, it is not one heat, it is not one match it can be five or seven matches or even more. Every match prepares you, ever match brings you closer to the goal and any match can break you.
When Reid Muscat became champion, he began the goal as a freshman who watched every video, watched every movie, and got a gym membership in the summer to bulk up. When Elijah and Ethan Vinoray qualified for state, they woke up at 3am and ran sprints, even when their bodies ached from shin splints. When Evan Adler became a league champion, he ran firelanes with weights and up Cowles by himself. It’s this mania that allowed Bryan Grubbs to meet the Zinkin in the finals at State, same wrestler he lost to three years before that made him third, and then won in overtime to become the champion. It’s this mania that made Ian Baker drive up to Cal State Bakersfield for practices at college level. It’s this mania that made Elijah Vinoray throw his opponent at the last thirty seconds for a pin after being three points behind. That’s what it takes. A decision that I have a goal, I made a promise to myself, and I will work myself to the bone to get that championship.
Now that’s what it takes for an individual league championship. As for a team, there have to be five to seven guys like that. Five to seven who say that they will do whatever it takes to be champions and even more importantly, to help each other become champions. When everyone is committed, when everyone wants it, when everyone has decided that they will do it, that’s when it happens.
Henry-Wrestling 