An Open Letter to Myself as a Younger Wrestler

Dear Dennis,

Your last year of wrestling in high school will be an interesting one to say the least. I realize looking back now that I can't change the past and so the feelings I had back then won't change simply because what I'm feeling now, but I wish to tell you this nonetheless. Your first day of practice your senior year will be hard. Not hard in the sense of a hard workout, you've been through much harder workouts at this point, but hard in the sense that you realize it's the beginning of the end. Something you've held dear, and as much as you don't want it to go, time wants to happen and we as humans are no match for time, no matter what we try to do. You won't go back after your first practice to your room and cry or whatever. It's not the time to be emotional. No, there's too much work to be done and so instead you'll go home, run and go to bed, exhausted and frustrated from cutting weight. Every day of the season will be a tough one. "Last meet with this team." "Last time I'll ever wrestle in this tournament." You'll love wrestling more than ever before because you realize more than all the previous years that it's fleeting. Yet there will also always be a sort a melancholic ring to every match. After every win, you'll be excited for a minute before thinking about how much you love this sport and get scared that it's leaving you or rather you're leaving it. Not due to your own accord, but due to time forcing the clock around. When you go into Sectionals your senior year you'll get the one seed, you'll be excited as at this point you still have only ever gotten second at a tournament before and feel that winning Sectionals would be the most amazing tournament to get your first tournament win at, sadly though, you will place 4th. Upon getting to States you won't really be that excited, just kind of content. Happy for your season to go on another week and you don't have to say goodbye so soon, but angry when you look at the top of the stand and realize that should be you. You vow to be even hungrier next week, shock the state at the tournament. At your last practice you won't be nearly as heartbroken as your first practice. Maybe it's because you're so confident in how hungry you are and your ability to shock the state or maybe you've just matured to the fact that you can't change time. The next day at States is when you'll cry. Immensely. Truth is you are close to doing something at the tournament when a badly shot takedown (while being up on points) will put you to your back. You'll leave the mat after rising your shoes above your head and putting them there. You'll cry harder than ever before shouting out "THIS WASN'T HOW MY CAREER WAS SUPPOSED TO GO OUT!" Which yes, you'll be right, you worked harder than that, but it happens. You'll be a broken man the next day looking at brackets. Just kind of hurt and mad at yourself. That day isn't the last day you'll be hurt. You'll be hurt for a while but you'll get over it. You'll have surgery on your wrist and that will hurt, but your pride will still hurt more, but eventually the pain will subside and you'll go on to choose a college and graduate and appreciate all what you had in wrestling even if it ends. Now if you want to know what's happened later on, well. You didn't wrestle your first two years of college. Life gets in the way sometimes. You'll coach though and as you'll tell the newspaper that you would love to coach one day, you're nothing if not true to your word. You love it more than anything and you seem to potentially have even more talent for it than you did the sport itself. Wrestling, though, you've decided to finally go back to it this year realizing yes, you've squandered the opportunity to continue a sport you love more than almost anything for two years, but you're not squandering that opportunity anymore. Because opportunity doesn't come around much. If there's any advice I can give you for life that I've learned these past years, it is don't squander opportunity and live in the moment and I think you're learning that just fine.

Truly yours,

An older, wiser, you