Talent is Everywhere But a Winning Attitude is Not

 Champions think big. They generate big energy. From my experience of winning the District #26 Wrestling Championship at the 122 lb weight-class in my senior year in High School, we love training. Even though the training was brutal as hell, we get a high off of it. Everyday is a tough day for champions. Some days are tougher than others. A champion knows that these tough days going to do him in if he does not get tougher.

 One of the things I've learned as a wrestler and especially as an assistant youth wrestling coach is that talent is everywhere but a winning attitude is not. A winning attitude is a MUST in wrestling. It must be a way of life. It's all about going to work with a goal in mind, and never going through the motions. A champion knows that if he goes through the motions, he will get bored, and will become ineffective. 

 One of my Burlington City Wrestlers name Joe Levach wrestled his opponent from Riverside this past wrestling season. While I was coaching Joe's match, his father approached me and says to me; "Out of couriosity, how much does your kid weigh and how old is he?" I said "about twelve years old, and weighs around 85-100 lbs." He then says to me; "you mean to tell me that a twelve year old kid that heavy wrestling my son?" I then said to him "the computer system pairs up opponents and in some cases one of our assistant coaches create hand matches."

This man was complaining that his son always wrestle guys that are either more experienced, much bigger, and much stronger than him - which makes him don't want to wrestle anymore. I did not want to get into a heated argument with him, so I just explained to him how the matches are paired by the computer system.

As far as his son wrestling opponents that are more experienced than him all the time is concerned, Thats BS! Look, this is wrestling. People get their asses kicked in the process. Thats the only way a wrestler can get better. If a wrestler always beating everybody, he will not know how it feels to get better. If he don't ever lose, he will never know how it feels to come up and improve, and my wrestler's opponent's father from riverside doesn't understand that.

Joe Levach is a very good wrestler. He's a Defending Grapevine Wrestling Champion at his weight-class. A wrestler can only become great when he wrestles other great wrestlers. An Author can only become the best selling author when he learns from other best selling authors. Success breeds success.

Well. That is all that I have for today. Thank you for reading these very powerful words.

                                                                                                                                        Think Bigger

                                                                                                                                         Don Lee