I should have been a basketball player.
I was tall. I could jump. I could run.
But I went out for wrestling in 4th and 5th grades in Algona, that’s what the fat kids did. When we moved to Knoxville, I went out for wrestling in 6th grade and had some success. So I continued to go wrestle. When I was in 9th grade I was on the varsity at 155 lbs, and no, I didn’t cut weight and yes, I was 6’4”.
I got pinned a lot.
I remember wrestling a senior from Lincoln High School. He won the Mr. Iowa body building competition. Not some Jr. or High School version of Mr. Iowa, but the Mr. Iowa. I was exactly 1 foot taller than him. He didn’t pin me until the 2nd period. I won 1 varsity match that year.
My sophomore year I wrestled at 185 lbs because I weighed 170. We needed a wrestler there and it was a close call between me and Charlie Miller. So I wrested guys who cut weight to get to 185 where I just showed up and wrestled. I was about a .500 wrestler that year. I won some matches, lost a bunch, won a sophomore tournament and beat some guys I wasn’t supposed to beat. The coaches and pretty much everyone else expected me to get out of the sectional tournament the next year and possibly go to state.
Wrestling is not a team sport. It is a very personal sport. You are pitted against an opponent who is your equal and you attempt to make them submit to your will. You do this with very few clothes on and in front of a large crowd. At Knoxville High School we even had a giant lamp that came down from the ceiling and illuminated only the mat. So if you were pinned, you were pinned under a spotlight. Some funny guy even placed a sign on the ceiling over the mat that read, “If you can read this sign, you are being pinned.” I read that sign many times.
I took losing very hard and very personally. I was not rooted in just the intrinsic goodness of me just being. I was performance-based in the view of myself. But really, that was pretty inconsistent, because I was not good in school and didn’t get good grades, I really only had one close friend and I think I was about 5th on his list. I had had a couple of girls I liked who only slightly liked me back, and I was an average wrestler, but I wanted to be great. The only think I was good at was singing, but I didn’t value that (oh, silly Chris, the heartache you could have avoided.) So I looked forward to the next season, my Junior year.
During the summer after my Sophomore year I had my driver’s license, a 1974 blue Chevy Vega notchback with no air, and my parent’s good will, so I did a lot of wild stuff. Stupid stuff. Dangerous stuff. Then a funny thing happened after the summer at the beginning of football season. I was good at football. I made a lot of tackles and sacks. I played offense and defense. I got some letters from some colleges, and I made All-Conference. I was in the piedmonts of my goal, the mountains of wrestling.
I had grown a little bit. I weighed in the 180s, but I was determined to wrestle at 167 lbs. It was only 20 lbs, but there was nowhere for it to come off. So I stopped eating, stopped drinking, and worked out 3 times a day. I would work-out early in the morning before school, then after school. I would go home in my basement and run for another hour, then I would sweat as much as I could in the hottest bath I could stand afterwards. I became obsessed with weighing myself. I weighed myself 10 times a day, stripped to my drawers. A wrestling room is not a pleasant place to be. It stinks and you torture yourself and your friends. I hated my coach (he used to play Dolly Parton 8-tracks while we wrestled.) But I had a belief that If I could make the weight, I would dominate.
Our first tournament was at Lynnville-Sully. I weighed in at 165 lbs. I lost my first two matches and didn’t place, I was crushed. Looking back, of course I couldn’t do well. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I had no strength, I was getting psychotic because of the abuse my body was taking (and not sleeping.) By the middle of the season my record was 5 wins 10 losses. I wrestled this guy from Wayne of Corydon. A guy who had moved up a weight because their stud wrestler at 167 was out with an injury. I had wrestled him a year earlier and had pinned him easily. Through the first two periods I was beating him soundly, but the third period, I broke down, and he came back. I remember just leaping in the air after that match and pounding the mat, right in front of everyone. My coach had to come get me off the mat. It was a long ride home. The coaches tried to talk to me, but they just ended up making me even madder. It was right then and there I made the decision, “After this year, I’m done.”
My record for the rest of that year was 12 wins and 3 losses. I won 3rd in my conference and wrestled-back with a chance to move on after sectionals. None of that mattered. I had moved on in my heart. I never wrestled again after that season. I learned how to drink alcohol and still make weight. I was looking forward to eating again, although it took me about a year to get myself to a place where I would eat an adequate amount without feeling anxious, even after I was saved, (ah, those were the days.) I went on a binge after that that sent me over the edge.
I got arrested at the boy’s state basketball tournament for public intoxication. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t move. All I could do was slump in the back of the police cruiser. I remember looking up and seeing those two officers in the front seat turned around and just laughing at me hysterically, (I'm not sure if that really happened, I just remember it that way) I was in the adult drunk tank in the Polk County jail and waiting for my parents to drive the hour to pick me up. I really wanted to die, really.
chris
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