From The Sports Desk – Wrestling Part Two

The season ended Saturday so it seems about time to recap the rest of the year.

Let’s start with some sample texts from Christopher about wrestling:

“I LITERALLY HATE YOU RIGHT NOW”

“This is annoying I want my Saturday back”

“I think it’s funny how people think I care”

“Wrestling is cancelled yeahhhhhh”

“Off to torture.  Never talking again.  I hate this.  Bye pray for me”

“Saddest part of my teen life.  I could cry right now for an hour.  I feel betrayed by you.  I hate my life with all the events.  THIS IS AWFUL”

and maybe the best text of the wrestling season

“Dad when school is over can you bring me a pair of underwear please I’ll go out to your car long story I’ll explain later”

!!! (that last text is not all what it seems….there was a hole and he made it a lot bigger during gym while stretching….)

So, yeah, he’s hated every second of wrestling.  I’ve reminded him; he went into this willingly….I’ve only NOT let him quit.  And he’s been pretty happy after he’s done well.  But those moments have been few and far between.

So let’s walk through the meets since the last post. 

Jackson Parkside:  The team wrestled 5 different teams; Cpher wrestled 4 times and went 1-3.

-vs- Western.  Click for video.  This is at the beginning of the 2nd period…he is winning 2-0.  And he overextended trying to do what the coach was telling him to do and the kid rolled him up for the pin.

 

-vs- Chelsea.  One bad thing about MS wrestling is if you are over 195 you wrestle everyone who is over that weight.  But again, Cpher is winning in this match 2-1 before the kid took him down and pinned him.  *if* I can convince him to try again in high school he *should* be able to wrestle at 215, not heavyweight.

-vs- Hillsdale.  The only match where I looked at the guy and went “Cpher has no chance here”.  You can see the clock over there on the right; he is pinned about 3 seconds after this.  But this picture is the big problem and the biggest area he could (and should) improve if he continues next year….he has been taken down and is not on his back yet….I don’t think Cpher has any idea how to get out of this position.

-vs- Lincoln.  The last match of the day was the only win and it is the first (and only) time this year that Cpher came back from behind to win. Might be the match with the most movement by the two kids as well.  The kid took Cpher down, escaped (but didn’t get a point for it….weird) took the kid down and then, by what Cpher swears was his plan, quickly got the kid in this headlock and pinned him about 10 seconds later.  Was a pretty sweet moment.

Thornapple Kellogg:  An ‘extra’ meet.  Went 2-1 and finished in 2nd place(!).

He wrestled three times; the total was 90 seconds of mat time and it is all in that same video if you click above.  This first match is fun for a few reasons.

1)  He ‘practiced’ the move he used to beat guy #1 and guy #2 on Matthew Friday night.   Matthew reports it is effective and he doesn’t want to be the practice partner too often….

2)  You can see this guys parents behind the lady in the lime green on the left.  The mom is fun to watch during the short time the camera is on her…..

Win by pin in 30 seconds. 

This kid must not have watched Cpher’s first match because Cpher very quickly gets him in the same position and after some pulling and yanking pins him in 22 seconds.  The next match is for first place!

 

This guy, who was the closest to Cpher by weight and by height (still about 10 lbs heavier) had watched Cpher both times….and said screw this, I’m shooting for the leg the moment the match begins.  Cpher does not do well when he is taken down and 30 second later he is pinned…..

The participants…..only posted here for the weights.

The final bracket….

Okemos:  Our only home meet; two other teams are here but only one has a kid in his weight class.  And Cpher loses by pin in the first period.

Click for the video. This is the first match since the introduction of the new move; so, of course, he tried it again here and actually got it in place.  BUT…this guy knew what he was doing and caught Cpher’s legs….and powered Cpher over and pinned him.

Eaton Rapids:  The end of the season (you can hear Cpher going ‘thank God’ as you read this).  The meet is double elimination and Cpher loses both matches to go home 0-2. 

-vs Owosso. Click for the video.  He had faced a kid from Owosso to start the season but that kids is nowhere around….and this kid was a whole lot better.  Had Cpher down 8-0 before pinning him in the 2nd period….heck, I’m impressed Cpher fought him off that long.  The kid went on to pin the top seed in the bracket in his next match.

-vs- JacksonParkside.  Again, click for video.  Cpher is winning the match 5-1 at the end of the second period….he has pushed this kid around for two periods, taken him down twice, has never been in a bad position and his coaches choose(!) for him to be down here.  He never escapes, and he makes a mistake and turns where the kid can pin him, and of course the kid does pin him with 30 seconds to go in the match.

Cpher admits this is the closest he came to crying about losing all year….he had this, and the coaches (I just don’t understand it….all year he only once escaped a bad position and was always better standing or on top) put him in the down position and that was that.

Sigh. 

Iphone Photo Dump – Bailey Edition

The best of random stuff from the last few months

I think these two are waiting for me to come back home.  Wiley tends to gravitate towards the windows when I’m away.  Wiley, by the way, is doing well.  Always under Bailey-attack and has not resorted to the flat-out takedown he put on Holly…..not sure he has that in him anymore.  Does still love those morning car rides…..

 

What happens when a 200-lb 8th grader slips and trips and falls down the stairs?  You get a hole in your drywall……I guess I’d rather have the wall damaged than the boy damaged….

Bailey is rocking a solid 45 pounds at six months; we are thinking she’ll top out around 60.  That means she is as big as Holly right now and will end up a little bigger than Wiley (right now; at Wiley’s peak he was 65 lbs).  Just go spayed and we just started training her on the invisible fence today. 

The one word I would use to describe Bailey is….calm.  Just really easy going….except when she is in her puppy mode.  Very laid back though…which is a good thing….

Getting some work in……all of us need to be doing more of this; the idea that we would use the treadmill more with it upstairs hasn’t really worked out yet….

 

Now this is cool….Melissa sent this postcard as part of her wedding invitation; the RSVP was printed on the back of it.  We think, but are not sure yet, that Melissa sent postcards that were specific to the geography of everyone who is invited to the wedding. 

The cool thing about this postcard is we had never heard of this park!  And yes, there is a colorful musical fountain there!  We’ll have to check it out this summer (the internet reports it is kind of sketchy with homeless…we’ll see)

Cpher, rocking his wrestling pullover, his medal, and a printout of the bracket from the Thornapple tournament.

 

A note that Kevin got from one of the orginazations that he is volunteering with in Boston.  There’s another evaluation out there somewhere that I should get as well…..

The basketball team.  There are four kids who can play in that picture.  And 5 who can’t.

 

I saved this so that I can text it to Kevin at opportune moments…..

The other family even when Kevin was home….a nice game of cut throat Uno.  Each hand took forever since everyone was always picking up cards and shoving the penalties to each other (and adding on to them).  We figured we’d play until someone left crying and mad but that didn’t happen (Matthew did leave the table in disgust at one point…but he came back quickly)

From The Sports Desk – Video Catch-Up Edition

A whole lot of basketball links for any who are interested:

Williamston

St. Johns

Didn’t talk about this earlier but I remembered as I watched the video……this ref did a crappy job.  Matthew got absolutely hacked and hammered and no calls…that’s not good when the other team is larger than you at almost every position.   The topper was the ref took exception that Matthew complained about it…and called him out to the middle of the floor and said ‘no more’. 

Now, Matthew shouldn’t have said anything.  But I’ve seen this ref enough over the years to know that he’s a total tool. 

Mason

The best part about playing Mason is that his buddy Zane is on this team…..and Matthew completely owned Zane during the game.  This is the first of three times I have on tape where Matthew takes the ball away from Zane and drives down the court for points. 

Okemos

Watching all the video I have to give the boy credit; when he had the chance he took the ball to the rack….and more often than not converted.

One last thing of note:  Matthew’s free throw shooting really improved as the season went on……I edit out the misses but trust me there weren’t many.  And he was just ‘swishing’ them that last day in Charlotte.

Jazz Band – Spaghetti Dinner

With Cpher bailing out of bass I only have one other kid to carry forward doing Jazz.  Matthew is ok with it; not thrilled, and it’s obvious at this point that him doing bass long-term is problematic.  Like Kevin, Matthew finds the music ‘boring’…..the teachers are long-known for teaching to the violins and everyone else falls in behind them.

We’ll see.  Mom and Dad are going to be a hard-sell on this.   And Jazz Band is one place he can do something outside of the box…..

But anyway, here are the first two ‘songs’ that the 7th grade jazz band has performed this year.  The pictures take you to the video.

 

“Tuxedo Junction”

“Night Train”

From The Sports Desk – Basketball Season Is Over

Much to Matthew’s delight, the basketball season is over.

This season was not fun for Matthew; feel guilty I made him keep doing it after he bombed the tryout BUT I’m glad he did. 

1)  He got a heck of a workout; played almost every minute of every game.  Great off-season fitness training for soccer.

2)  He had to consistently guard kids 4 to 6 inches taller than him; I think the experience of battling against these guys will really help him over the next 18 months as everybody around him grows as puberty hits.  I assume he will be like his brothers and late too it…..

3)  He had to really improve his basketball skills especially his ball handling.  He had to be the point guard (a lot) and did really well with it.

Finished up the season with only one win; that game against Mason.  He missed the games against Leslie and Stockbridge (we got slaughtered).  We were competitive against St. Johns and Holt but lost; we got killed by Williamston and Portland St. Patrick.

I have highlights from the St. Johns and Williamston games; I’ll post them sometime.  There isn’t a lot of Matthew; his contributions were mostly defensive AND it was very obvious that one of the other kids was going to shoot the ball every chance he got.  Wish Matthew had been a little more like this….

Anyway, the season ended Saturday with the tournament.  Two losses and you are out….

So the kid who took 80% of our shots?  He’s not here.  I don’t believe that is a great thing as we start but as the day went on I realize it forced us to be more balanced…..and it forced Matthew to finally do what I’ve been wanting him to do….take the ball inside on a consistent basis.

We performed to our seed; we beat Mason, lost a close game to Grand Ledge (really close, was 9-9 at the end of three quarters), beat the other Okemos team, and then got blasted by Dewitt (it was Game 2 for them and Game 4 for us….but even if we weren’t do tired I think they would have killed us…they had a big tall good kid and we have no defense for that).

In our two wins Matthew was completely awesome; had half the points for the team in each game and for Mason in particular just carved them up.  He did not start the Mason game strong; two quick fouls, one missed three point shot and a seat on the bench because of the two fouls.  But, when he came back in late in the second quarter…and all of the second half?  They couldn’t stop him….and they couldn’t get by him on defense.

Video to come.

The Okemos game was weird; we slowly pulled out to a 8 point lead heading into the fourth quarter….and they went on a big run to pull ahead late in the fourth quarter.  Our team had no idea what to do; Matthew is the only one who understands what the coach is saying….pressure everything.  He’s the only one fouling to stop the clock…..and he fouls out with 30 seconds to go.  I figure we are doomed….all the other team has to do is hold on to the ball and make free throws BUT they screw up and take a shot and miss….we get the ball, go up court, and they make the second mistake, they don’t just foul, they do it poorly and really push from behind and get called for a technical with six seconds left.  We make the free throws and go on to win.  The kid who did it was bawling……and Matthew felt really bad for him after the game.

Video to come for this game as well.

From The Sports Desk – Indoor Soccer Week Four

We finish up our seven game season at Wixom with two games (with an hour in between).  Two games against teams who will be in Premier 1; the first against MI Alliance (who beat us 3-0 early in January when we were missing five kids) and MI Tigers (who we beat 5-1 to start the Fall Season).

MI Alliance:  Tied 1-1.  I thought we controlled things; they scored first but it was really on their first or second chance on goal in the first 35 minutes.  A fluky kind of goal too; our center back missed the bounce of a goal kick and their kid was off to the races.  Our goal was fluky as well; their goalie misplayed it and that was that.

Thought the boy played well; spent most of this game at attacking center mid and did what he needed to do.

(click on the picture for the video…..he’s way over there on the far side…and is about to be fouled to set up a free kick from a good position.  After the game, Matthew admitted it wasn’t much of a foul against him…..their coach was pretty upset about it)

MI Tigers:  I wish we could play these guys all the time; they seem to have no answer for what we do.  Beat them 3-1; they scored very late and we scored almost immediately afterwards.

(click. video.   Played large portions of this game at right mid and was very effective here…set up some great chances on goal and really helped to make the offense go at times.  Would like to see our team end up in this formation some; they had Matthew and his buddy Jackson (who are both normally center mids) out at left and right mid….and I think we were much more dangerous in the final third with our team deployed this way.)

A good winter season of soccer; wish we would have played like this in the fall….our spring would look a lot different!

 

From The Sports Desk – Wrestling Part One

Haven’t really been talking about this here even though I’d say this sport dominates the scene around this house right now.

At some point in the Fall we were talking about the exorbitant fee that the school district charges to play even one sport in middle school ($260).  I guess the upside of that fee is that it is one of the main reasons the boys were encouraged to do cross country (I’d say about half this and about half that it would be good for general fitness) and it started discussions about doing wrestling.  Matthew is busy enough that we never pushed it with him, but Christopher’s friend does it and seemingly, very easily, talked him into doing it.

And Cpher hates it.  Every day after practice he comes home and rants and rants and rants about it.  Would quit in a heartbeat if we would let him.  We won’t…..he can stick it out.  The season ends in three weeks.

But why am I forcing him to keep doing it?  One is that he looks like he could be really good at it (and the coach agrees).  The other is that Cpher has worked so hard at getting his body into this really good place that I’m reluctant to sign on for anything that will lower his physical activity…..because he isn’t going to voluntarily cut back on eating!

Anyway…..he’s only been in three competitions to date (he missed one sick and missed one for a snow day) so let’s talk about those.

Fowlerville Tournament:  The first tournament of the year; there are about 16 schools here and Cpher will face three opponents.  From the parenting side, we learned three things about wrestling.  1)  A wrestling tournament is going to mean a warm gym with a lot of smelly boys  2)  There is a long time between matches, and since Cpher is wrestling in the heavyweight division there is a long wait until he even starts and 3) you can wait a long time for not a lot of action.

Match 1:  Against Owosso.   Video by clicking the photo below

Cpher’s friend, and his Dad, both seemed to think that Cpher had some natural built-in advantages as he began his wrestling career.  Cpher is ‘long’…tall and long arms, and his opponents are overwhelmingly shorter and pudgy.  I don’t think Cpher has wrestled anyone with ten pounds of him yet.  It will show up in all of these photos; these kids have big big arms and are ‘rounder’….Cpher has worked hard to shed pounds and hasn’t really done that….but he has stayed the same weight (he has bounced below and above 200 lbs for 8 months now) while he has grown several inches and I think he has changed a lot of his fat into muscle.

His coach has said that being tall and having long arms is a big technical advantage as well.  And from the six matches I have seen, I believe it. 

For the first tournament Dad has one goal….please please let us have one little hint of success.  The worst thing that could happen would be getting pinned in the first period in each of these matches (and watching some of the early matches there were kids who were on the mat ten seconds before getting pinned and that’s that).  

So this first match, against Owosso, gets started and Christopher makes the first move to take the guy down…and ends up for about 30 seconds in a position much like the one above….he has about half of a takedown.  No points for this…..but he finally (right after this photo I think) pushes the guy onto his back….

gets his two points for the takedown and ends up pinning him!

Wish I had video of the smile on Cpher’s face when he came up later…..

Match 2:   I had watched the other match between the other two guys Cpher is going to wrestle…the guy from Dansville pinned the guy from Jackson Catholic pretty quickly.  I don’t tell Cpher this before the match….no sense in getting him nervous.  In hindsight, I think it might have been better to tell him because maybe he wouldn’t have been aggressive like he was….and this begins a theme for the next few matches. Cpher would make a mistake, and the other guy would obligingly put his shoulders on the mat since Cpher helped put them there.

(click above for video).  Cpher is trying something new this match, using his leg to try and get behind the other guy’s leg to take him down by tripping him.  I haven’t seen him try this since, and that might be because this ended disastrously….

Where he got his leg around, and was tripping him, and lost his balance and the guy fell directly on top of him and that was that.

Match 3:  Against Jackson Catholic.  Click below for the video.

Another great example of height difference and arm difference.  Does body fat store in the arms first?  Have to look that up I guess.  I don’t think these kids are all weight training (Cpher will start some weight training with the football team this spring…..I’m thinking he will look a lot different six months from now!)

This is the only match this evening that made it to the second period.  Cpher took the guy down (shown here) for two points and seemed to be doing pretty well.

Ok, looking at the video I remember now that the guy was super aggressive; he took Cpher down but Cpher rolled him over while on the ground to get the points.

Cpher ‘rides him out’ to end the period and it’s 2-0 Cpher at the end of one…

Cpher had the choice of what position to be in to begin the second; his coach chose down.  This was the assistant coach, and I don’t think it was a wise choice given the height and arm length advantage that Cpher has over most of his opponents.  He gets another point because, of, well, I have no idea, he didn’t escape and they go back to the starting position.  Cpher doesn’t escape again but ends up in some strange position where he is basically sitting on his butt and the guy has him from behind.  And it is very obvious watching that Cpher had no idea what to do or where to go from the position he was in…and he basically stopped moving while trying to figure it out (Cpher said this later as well).  The guy ends up pulling Cpher over and pinning him about ten seconds later….

I’ve never seen Cpher as, well, upset is too strong, but, disgusted might be right….disgusted by something as we drove away from an event.  Repeatedly on the way home he says “I want that kid again!”  “I had him!”  

And he did……but he lost.

Fowlerville Dual: This dual, the first one of the middle school season, sucked.  Because Fowlerville didn’t have a kid in Cpher’s weight class, and the Owosso kid injury defaulted, so Cpher and I waited two hours for him to wrestle the kid from Williamston…..and that ended in 45 seconds with Cpher getting pinned. 

Again, I think this happens because Cpher doesn’t know what he is doing at some points; this time he tried to escape and essentially rolled over onto his back for the guy!  Sigh.

Eaton Rapids Dual:  Wrestled against Eaton Rapids and got pinned 57 seconds.  The only mistake he made is that he let a much shorter kid get way too close to him…..was pretty impressed he fought off the pin for as long as he did.

Charlotte didn’t have anyone at this weight class.

Haslett did….Christopher dominated this kid (who was shorter and much heavier…right up against the middle school weight limit of 250 lbs); had a near fall at the end of the first period and ended up pinning the kid in the second period.

(click on the picture for the video)

So, he’s 2-4 so far.  A big tournament on Saturday; we will be there all day (Christopher because he is ‘forced’ into it; me because I feel like I have to support him through these long long matches if I’m going to not let him quit).  Hope he finds some success there.