Beijing Olympics 2008

I watched the Women’s Freestyle Event on the live feeds last night. Irini Merlini of Ukraine went up against Clarrisa Chun, 48kg whatever that is in pounds, superfeather weight. I always considered wrestling girls to be the equivalent of giving up in the sport of wrestling. Wrestling is the hardest sport in the world, and has also been co-ed since Ancient Greece. There shouldn’t be girl and guy wrestlers, there should just be wrestlers, and if you can’t hack it with the best of the wrestlers, then you don’t deserve to be called the best of the wrestlers.

Last night, the Lightweights went toe-to-toe and fought like pro’s. They flowed and circled around each other, taking shots, landing them, missing them, lifting each other off the mat and slamming each other through the floor, all in the blink of an eye sometimes. When Japan defeated China on her home turf, she did a back-flip over the mats. They didn’t even look like women, they looked like…wrestlers, like Olympic Wrestlers.

The Girl Wrestlers looked like Gladiators, and there were even women from countries like Azerbaijan and Albania where women aren’t allowed to speak without a mans permission, muchless wrestle. These were women who had all come up against men, fought their way through men’s team lineups, against countries who most likely shunned them for their sport, and brought it to each other last night. Women who looked like the men, fought like the men, and “handled it like men.” That’s all I ever asked of you girls, that’s how you do it, the sport of wrestling has not been disgraced.

I watched the gold medal match and cried. I watched the medal ceremony because I felt like I owed it to the athletes, if no one is going to watch you win, did you really win? I had to turn it off after that though, I couldn’t handle it. It was 2005 when I was thrown off my high school team for missing one day of practice in 2 seasons, it was 2006 when I left Cerritos Wrestling to join the Army and lost the nerve. Now it’s another Olympic year and some people have wondered where I’ve been. What became of me?

I drop into an mma gym every once and a while thinking I can start fighting, but then I never come back because the coaches want me to fight girls. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m sexist if it’s possible to be sexist against your own sex, but I can’t seem to shake the mindset of how it was back in the wrestling room at school, the feeling of my body moving faster and harder than I ever thought it could because I was going against people who were faster and harder than me. I miss that feeling, it felt like growing, it felt like I had super powers. I just don’t get that feeling against other girls, and training against guys to fight against girls feels like being short-changed. Also, after going hard out and wrestling live for hours upon hours just beating each other up, gender, race, religion, where you’re from, all of that dissappeared. Maybe a co-ed clause in sports would make me happy, all I really want to do is challenge up. I’ll wrestle girls for you if I can wrestle guys for me, but I’ve slowly come to accept the fact that I might not ever wrestle again, and I wake up crying sometimes from dreams. Once I slammed my head into my weightbench next to my bed because I’d been belly-down in my sleep and tried to stand up when my alarm clock went off, it sounded like a whistle I guess.

I didn’t get into the University of British Columbia (they wanted my high school transcripts), so I’ve tried to integrate myself into the workforce as best I can. My supervisor, no matter who he or she is, reminds me of my Team Captain and my Coach. Wrestling taught me to stay out of their way and if you have a problem, it’s your problem and people who have problems are incompetent, so I don’t go to my sup’s with problems, I just let them stew and blow over, getting me in trouble. I’ve been getting in a lot of trouble lately. I don’t know, maybe wrestling really ruined my life, I was a swimmer before I was a wrestler with a 3.00gpa. I never wonder where I’d be if I didn’t wrestle though, that takes away from wondering where I’d be if I could wrestle. It takes away from remembering wrestling, because I don’t know what I’m going to do when I forget.

When wrestling took itself out of my life, I felt like a failure. I quit school, I stopped seeing my friends, I shut myself off from the world and contemplated suicide. Now thinking back on it, I got into wrestling because of the training, I wanted to be strong, and only started wanting to compete after going to my first tournament and sitting on the bench. Since I’ve left school, I’ve been a firefighter, I’ve been a lifeguard, and I can walk alone at night.

My goal when I started wrestling: become strong.

I am strong.

Thank You Sean

Dear Sean,

Thank you for being a good teammate, for getting me up those bleachers, and for not laughing my last day at Warren. But most of all, thank you for not judging me.

Nicole

I Was A Wrestler

Well, quit the team today. I fucking quit the team today. I had to, after talking with people who’d had herpes and with experts and getting an in-depth risk talk, I couldn’t take the chance. The fact that there’s a confirmed case of herpes in the league means that my chances of getting it would be 1 in10 per every match I wrestle, and…I just can’t take that chance.

Skin problems are a huge issue with wrestlers. Every season SOMEONE gets ringworm on EVERY team, its just a given. Impetaigo and eczema are common although I’ve never had them. They spread like wildfire in a room where you’re constantly rubbing up against other people’s sweat, and the fact that you can get skin Herpes (not the STD kind) from just touching someone who has it is enough motivation for me to get my priorities in order. I finally got rid of the ringworm I had on my left forarm. After two weeks of bleach and a hairdryer, I’m thinking I should have just used the Lamisil.

I talked to coach, he smiled when he saw me and we talked about it. It’s a disqualifying condition for the military, at least type 2 is. Type 1 i’m not sure about, but I still don’t want to have it regardless. Painful outbreaks with fever every month for the rest of my life and for everyone else I touch is not something I’m willing to put my family, my friends, or myself through. And besides, Brandon is still on the team, conditioning with us, and touching the mat with us.

I told him thank you for everything and for giving me the opportunity to be on the team and to wrestle, that it was a lot more than anyone has ever done for me. I said this team was the best group of guys I’ve been around and the best coaching staff I’ve ever come in contact with. Coach shook my hand and said that it sucks because I looked like I was having fun, and that he doesn’t care man, woman or child, as long as I was in there every day working hard…I was a wrestler in his book.
I was a Wrestler.

I’m still a wrestler I guess, sorta, I mean it’s not like I’m going to quit wrestling, just with that team in this league. Hopefully someday I’ll get to wrestle again, hopefully the next team I’m on will be as great of a team as this team was with people like Sean and Jareth and Bryan who are going to push me and pat me on the back when I’m working hard and tell me not to shoot for their right leg and then shoot for mine. Hopefully the next coach I have will be as great as Coach Garriot was and think that as long as I’m there doing the work I’m a wrestler. Maybe I can wrestle for the Army, or at the next college I’m at, assuming something like this doesn’t happen again. I’m still going to go help out at tournaments sometimes, I’m still working the Halloween Open with the rest of the unhired help.

Well heck this sucks. Don’t know what I’m going to do with this blog now. It was supposed to be one of those things that follows someone through their ups and downs and watches them finally suceed in the end or grow stronger or something dumb like that. I guess I was trying to send a message with my story or maybe inspire someone else or I dunno. Guess I was trying to make a point.

Aw screw it. Follow your dreams, they take you places. I think.

Brandon has Herpes

Brandon, our Heavyweight and Team Captain, got herpes this weekend at the Mt. SAC tournament. He came in today with red splotches of warts and sores all over his face. He was the guy that held the team together, the guy that threw parties and let guys stay at his house before matches, and now his wrestling career is over.

Mine could be over too. I hate saying that, but he didn’t get impetaigo or ringworm, he got HERPES! And herpes is lifelong, it doesn’t go away, ever. If I were to get herpes, it literally would be the end of the world. I would never be able to wrestle again, or do judo, I’d have to stop jiujitsu at the Y which would alienate me from the only friends I have and training with Peter would be out of the question. But that’s not even half of the reason why my life would be over…if I get herpes, so much for the military.

So maybe I’m being a little paranoid, and maybe I’m a heck of a hypochondriac, but herpes is a disqualifying condition for the military, and if I get DQ’d, the whole reason I got into football and wrestling and extreme sports will have been for nothing. I want to be a Diver in the Army, Dive school is harder than Ranger school. I love wrestling more than anything, it feels like who I am and it makes me special, but would I give my life to keep wrestling?

Wrestling is taboo for girls, its not the same as a girl saying she she’s a judoka or a jiujitsuka or even a submission grappler, when a girl says she’s a wrestler, she is business. Girl wrestlers are literally the toughest athletes in the world. I’m saying with absolute certainty that they are tougher than people who run ultramarathons, who play football or lacrosse, or who box and fight bare-knuckle. Female wrestlers are tough because unlike all the other sports where all you have to do is be strong, girl wrestlers aren’t welcome. The other sports are some of the toughest in the world, but it’s open to anyone brave enough to accept the challenge…girl wrestlers have to fight just for their right to accept the challenge in most cases. Maybe the people who do the Ecochallenge are on parr with girl wrestlers, but that’s just because that race in and of itself is unnatrual and unwelcoming.

Wrestling has made me a fighter, and it makes me special. I say I’m a wrestler and it automatically gets me respect among guys. Navy SEALs have given me props and the greatest fighters in the world have let me train with them. But respect is not the reason I wrestle. Far from it. I wrestle because I like it. It feels right. I feel like wrestling is where I belong, and no one can take that away from me. Even if they made girls wrestling illegal like it is in some states and in most of the world still today, I would still be a wrestler and I would still belong there. It doesn’t matter if I don’t go to the Olympics or to State or even if I lose more matches than I win, I’m still a wrestler and I can still fight. I love wrestling.

But wrestling is not what I want to do with my life. There’s very little that any wrestler can do with the sport of wrestling besides get a scholarship with it and quit. Swimming, at least you can be a lifeguard or a rescue diver or join the Coast Guard or the Navy SEALs, but as much as I love wrestling, I don’t know if I can risk my life over it. If I get herpes, I can’t work for the county, so so much for being a lifeguard. I can’t join the military, I couldn’t get on any other college team, I couldn’t work with animals because my skin condition would kill some species, and not to mention that my social life would be non-existent (as if it isn’t now).

But basically, I’m concidering quitting wrestlng because I’m scared? Brandon’s off the team! I’ve never wrestled him or even touched him. I could wrestle in sweats and wear layers of underarmour to tournaments, its not like I didn’t know about the risks when I joined the team. Though the odds of getting a condition increase dramatically when someone one the team has already had it, ultimately I’m thinking of quitting because I’m scared.

Mother Theresa kissed the wounds of leppers, and never got sick herself. She wasn’t afraid, fear shuts down the immune system and makes you suseptable to illness. In my life I thought I was just cursed with bad luck because every time something good starts to happen something bad always comes up and just fucks it up. I’ve realized that that’s just life.

If life were easy, everyone would do it.

Life is also dangerous and hard, and part of life being hard is not just accepting the challenge. I think if life were all about accepting challenges, it would be easy because it would follow the program, but I guess sometimes the program gets a little messed up. Sometimes life takes us to places where it’s not just our integrity on the line, or our pride or our namesake, sometimes there’s a lot more on the line. I have to decide whether what the risk of staying on the team, despite the fact that skin conditions among wrestlers spreads like wild fire, is worth the gain I would recieve from staying on the team and perservering.

I’m scared, I’ll admit, but I knew that other wrestlers got herpes, its just when it walked onto my team’s mat that I freaked. If someone would have said that someone over at Moorpark got herpes, I would have been at practice right now. I have no fear in the face of a challenge, but danger is something else. I’m going to the army to get shot at, that’s dangerous, that could end my life, but I think I’d rather end my life getting shot than getting herpes, I don’t know.

I have never run when something has gotten hard, but if I run every time something gets a little dangerous, I’ll be running from everything. There are people who claim to have cures for herpes, they’re in the process of sueing the Food and Drug Administration and the Medical Corporations. I have their contact information, and Coach gave me until tommorrow to make a decision.

I feel horrible for Brandon.

I Broke A Rule

I broke a rule

its a major social rule amongst athletes, but its much worse among guys.

I, a scrub, a walk-on, first year wrestler, told a State qualifier “good job.”

You just don’t do that. Its condecsending. When you tell someone better than you who is not your friend “good job,” it makes it seem like you think you’re in a position to tell him he did a good job….as if you know what a good job is….as if you know better than him.

All this after he came over to apologize for not shaking my hand after his match because he had a hurt shoulder. Shaking hands or a pat on the back is okay, but “good job” is not.

I said this about 2 weeks ago to the first guy who talked to me on the team. Before he knew I was a girl, he sat next to me at the all-athletes meeting in the gym, and after he found out I was a girl, he still paired up with me and drilled with me a little bit, it was never anything more than a little to begin with.

After I told him good job, we haven’t since made eye contact.

Mt. SAC Tournament

First tournament was today, I didn’t sleep a wink last night, even though I wasn’t wrestling…

Only like 8 guys on the team could wrestle because we could only find like 8 singlets! NONE of our stuff that we ordered came on time, no warmups, no headgear, no shoes, and 8 singlets from like 10 years ago that coach found in the back of the storage room!
Everyone met at like 5 in the morning to get on the bus. Most of the guys were cutting weight hard so they hadn’t eaten or drunk any water in like 5 days and were cranky and thristy and sleepy. 20 minutes on the road we were already there, waaay early. Jimmy, our 125lb guy, was ticked.

“See this is what happens when we get here early! Sit on a fucking bus!”

LOL. So the bus driver and the coaches get out and we’re all by ourselves, and a few of the guys decide to go push buttons in the drivers seat. One guy’s playing with the microphone, and another guy’s trying to lock the coaches out.

“You know what they say about people who press buttons,” I said.

“What do they say?”
“I don’t know.”

So weigh-in’s finally come and we are the most rag-tag team at this tournament! Everyone’s in matching warmups and and shoes and headgear and we’re all in shorts and different color tshirts, we might as well have been the rainbow team. We were going to put Cerritos Wrestling on a bunch of white t-shirts but we didn’t have enough t-shirts.

“Aight, Shane, Nicole, here are your jobs,” coach had to give the guys who weren’t wrestling jobs so that they could come to the tournament, “Shane, you’re the video guy. Nicole, remind me not to lose this medical bag!”

“Coach! Don’t lose the medical bag!”

“Thanks, but not right now! Good practice though.”

Eventually I ended up doing video anyway though because Shane did stats. Coach put Shane on stat’s because he just couldn’t bring himself to be that sexist as to put me on stats (lol). So I got the first duel, and third duel on tape (the second one I fell asleep…oops).

Dutsey, our 135lber, wrestled like a squirel on crank! I mean it was amazing watching the lightweights go at it, like they were doing flips in the air and they pull off hi-amp throws like nothing. Al, our 215 guy, is a lean mean wrestling machine and I think he’s done judo before seeing as he can hit an inside-thigh sweep on people.

Overall, we went 2-2 and practices are definately going to start getting harder. I had fun, now I’m going to take a shower and hit the hay, even though I didn’t wrestle I’ve been up all night and filming for 3 hours strait is easier said than done!

LOL, Wrestlers!

Oh gosh now that I’m officially on the team roster with my goofy team picture and everything, check out what Coach wrote about me as my self-description:

NIKKOL PEPAJ

YEAR: FRESHMAN HS/COLLEGE: WARREN HIGH SCHOOL (2005) HT: 6-0 WT: 150 MAJOR: BIOLOGY/JOURNALISM

Is looking to become the first woman to ever compete in wrestling at Cerritos College… Was a member of the Falcon swimming team last season… Named her high school’s Most Improved Wrestler as a senior… Also competed on the swimming team and was a member of the judo club… Most memorable moment is training for jujitsu under the legendary Gene LeBell and when she was able to get a semi-pro cage fighter to tap out on an arm bar… Father competed in swimming in high school, while her brother Jarrett (13) plays basketball… Is also working on a minor in zoology… Aspires to join the army and then become a journalist… Is a blue belt in jujitsu… Likes to draw and study art in her spare time… Nicknamed “Nik”… Has two other siblings – Anaya and Babette… Is the daughter of Vasel and Debi Pepaj… Born on June 5, 1987…..

Favorite Athlete: Royce Gracie Favorite Movie: “Unleashed” Favorite Food: Pizza Favorite TV Show: “Ultimate Fighting” Favorite Book” “Honor Harrington”

LOL, Swimmers

I was on the swim team in the spring. The girls were funny and the guys were weirdo’s. I change in the swimmer’s locker aisle, they have big comfy couches (!!).

Usually after practice I come into the locker room right as the swimmer’s (waterpolo season) get out of practice, and I’m as soaked as they are. One day I came into the lockerroom and Michelle, the Full Back Bull of the waterpolo team, saw me and just started laughing!

I was changing yesterday before practice while the waterpolo girls were sitting down chilling and they were talking about shaving legs (those are the kind of weird topics that come up in a girls lockerroom while everyone’s half naked and screwing around). I related my story about how I got called on shaving my legs in the second week of practice.

“MY GOD Nicole, do they know you’re a girl?”

“YES! Now they do!”

And then I ran out of the lockerroom and left them busting up because I was late to practice.

By the way, his name is Jareth

And he elbowed me in the face! All in play of course.

My partner, the guy who said he doesn’t go easy and doesn’t care that I’m a girl, finally has a name. Dunno why I didn’t just listen to the roll call earlier to hear it. His name is Jareth.

He usually partner’s up with Sean now, and I usually go with either the 145lber or the tall 165lber (gosh what a team player I am, don’t even know my own teammates names). But if Sean’s not there, I’m his partner by default. And nope, I don’t have much say in the matter (lol).

So, today we’re going over more granby rolls (shoulder rolls from bottom). Everyone’s just screwing around wrestling and doing weird stuff and getting into strange pinning combo’s that end up pinning themselves. Jared hits a Granby on me and I throw my leg over his head. That little leg over the head thing is responsible for tapping half a dozen blue belts, love it. So I’m pulling Jared’s head back with my leg when all of the sudden WHAK! HE ELBOWS ME IN THE FACE!!!

“OW HEY!”

“I don’t see a ref!”

Punk! LoL.

You’re not going to do it, it’s just not going to happen

Why is anything that goes against the status quo automatically wrong? It’s strange how people have the right to be wrong as long as they are wrong in numbers. Greater numbers defines what is right and wrong I guess, and one person doesn’t count as a minority.

So today I had a good practice. I hit a Granby roll off a guy and we got to our feet, my escape. I walked back with a big smile on my face and Sean started laughing. We had to beat our time for the school loop again today too. I found out it’s about 1.7 miles, and I ran it in 12:11, an improvement from 12:24. That’s respectable I guess, about a 13 minute 2 mile, somewhere around there. I guess it’s not like I’m slow, but it’s not like I’ll be making the track team anytime soon.

So it turns out a lot of the first year guys are copping out and deciding to redshirt instead of compete. Even Sean is redshirting. Seeing as my whole justification for going out for the team was if Sean had a right to get his ass kicked I had a right to get my ass kicked too, should I be redshirting aswell? I talked to Coach Garriot and asked him for his advice. He pretty much said he wasn’t a big fan of redshirting but that it depended on what my goals were. He told me how I could get a scholarship to a college with a woman’s team, and when I told him I didn’t care about women’s teams, he told me something I had to just take and walk away…

“Well you’re not going to get a sholarship to a men’s team, no matter what you do that’s just not going to happen.”

I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut and take it when people say these sort of things, but there’s no way to just brush these sort of things off, they don’t just brush off that easily. They stay like salt in a wound that doesn’t wash out with water.

Why do people do that? Put limitations on people that they really have no right to give. He might be a great coach and a great wrestler and he might not have meant it exactly the way it sounded, but he still can’t predict the future, and even though I could care less about a scholarship, he still has no right to tell me what I am and am not capable of. It doesn’t matter how unlikely something is, you just don’t kill it before it starts growing. Jeez!

I’ve gotten very tired of that, of walking around and finding only people who just can’t go that far with their beliefs. They look at me and they just can’t picture me suceeding in what I’m doing. A girl, on a men’s wrestling team, hitting it up with men and hanging. I understand it’s not like I’m Chyna and bench 300lbs, but why can’t people just be brave and believe in me? It’s only making it harder for me if people keep telling me “my money’s not on you.” I just don’t understand.

It hurts. I have to admit it really hurts. I doubt myself whenever I hear someone say, as if it were common knowledge, “well I mean you’ll never be as strong as a guy.” And it also doesn’t matter how many guys I beat, it will always be that THEY sucked (on that day or in general), not that I’m actually any good. I start to doubt myself so much because all I’m hearing is negative feedback. My confidence shakes and I become weak. How do you just brush it off when people say “you’re going to fail?”

Supposedly what Coach meant was that it’s not that I’m not capable of getting good enough to take a guy’s spot at the University level (dreams someday), it’s that other people would get in my way. Other teams would forfeit to me which would hurt my team, little problems like no open lockerroom and other people just flat out insisting that girls shouldn’t wrestle would get in my way.

Firstly, I think that if I’m good enough, coaches will be begging me to be on their team. Sarah Mcmann, the Olympic Silver Medalist, got a full ride scholarship out of high school to Lehigh University to start on their men’s varsity team. As long as I beat the guy in my weight class I don’t see a problem. I don’t understand why the rest of the world does.

People have told me that they don’t understand why this sport means so much to me. Their assumption is that I know I don’t belong here and that I’m doing it because I have something to prove. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, I do this because I love to wrestle and I want to win. I don’t want to be a “girl wrestler,” I want to be a wrestler, against guys. It’s harder, and I do belong here. There’s no one that can say I don’t belong here, they don’t have the right to say that!

But they do anyway, and who am I to stop them from saying what they want. This wonderful country gives us the freedom of speech, and I wouldn’t take someone’s right to speak freely away from them if it would solve all of my problems…but sometimes I’d like to take away their right to their opinions.

It’s not like I haven’t found anything harder than wrestling either. I started out in football, went to wrestling because it was harder and got hooked. If there were a Lacrosse team at Cerritos, I’d probably go out for that too. The reason I’m not a boxer is because ironically women’s boxing is more prevelant than women’s wrestling. I can still fight guys in this sport. I can’t do judo because no one will train me, and jiu jitsu is too expensive to do if you’re not part of a club or a team (all of the BJJ gyms are expensive as hell, that’s why it takes 8 years to get your black belt).

It just hurts. Whenever anyone states the “obvious” of a girl will never beat a guy. I do it all the time, and yet it means shit. In my mind when I think I’ve achieved equality status, some other idiot comes along and pushes me down again.

I belong here, I’m no different than any other guy on that team, physically, mentally, whatever. If I suck it’s because I’m a lousy wrestler, not because I’m a girl. I wish I could find someone else who agree’s with that.

The Only Person Who Can Beat You Is You

And oh how good at that I am.

Match day again. I got pinned twice, once in the first period and the other 18 seconds into the second period after spending half of the first period on my back.

It’s not like I don’t know why though. It wasn’t even all of my fault. I’ve beaten the second guy before, believe it or not it was my singlet.

I tried to tell myself it was my singlet too, I mean I was wearing the one I bought for the NAGA, the one with the really cool Tiger design on it which made me self-concious and nervous because I thought I looked cockey wearing it. Plus I wasn’t wearing any underarmour underneath, my bare skin was exposed and usually I wear underarmour in practice. I mean I did great during my warmup match because I had a Tshirt on, then when tshirt came off, I realized I had a subcouncious fear of getting mat burn (??). Then again, I have a subconcious fear of just about everything, so it’s not too suprising.
This was why too, I knew this was why, but still I couldn’t bring myself to not blame myself. Afterwards, the coach called us all together and told us not to worry if we lost 8-0 or got pinned, the only person who can defeat us is ourselves. If we walk off the mat knowing that we gave it our all, we’re not beaten.

But I was beaten because I beat myself. I can’t beat up other’s so I beat up myself. When coach say’s not to worry, that its not life or death…what do you think I start thinking about?

I get disappointed easily, I went into the girls lockerroom and (I admit) cried. I kept getting flashbacks of Coach Brogden and the Warren Wrestlers making jokes and pushing me around because I wasn’t allowed to push back. I’m never allowed to push back, I’ll get kicked off the team if I push back, and I still feel like Coach Brogden is standing outside the Cerritos Wrestling room waiting for me to screw up like he was waiting in high school. I stick out, everyone see’s my actions. Now I’ve convinced myself that even if I were allowed to push back, I couldn’t.

“You’re just not strong enough, not tough enough, not good enough, you never will be.”

These are my words. I hear them constantly from myself. There are times where I hate everything about me, and the only time it seems to go away is when I’m doing good, or when I’m winning, or improving. And even then, the only reward is silence, when I do bad, the consequence is loud screaming in my head telling me I’m a screwup. Never “Nicole you did a good job today,” I can’t bring myself to say that to me.

I hate that the opinions of people saying I can’t do it matter more than my own opinions. I guess its that I doubt myself more than I doubt other people. When you doubt other people, you’re looking for a fight, when you doubt yourself, it’s an easy victory…cut off your nose to spite your face, because you won’t fight back. I’m a looser and I forgot what positive was.

Why couldn’t I just brush it off? I knew it was the singlet. I mean no, I wasn’t about to beat Sean, but I knew I wouldn’t have frozen up like that if my body weren’t subcounciously afraid of getting burned all the way up to the elbows. I shot anyway, I wrestled anyway, I didn’t know I was afraid of that. I would have shot a lot better if my body would have known it was protected. It’s nobody’s fault for not wanting to get hurt, that’s just normal. I’m just not trained.

But no matter what I say, it all feels like an excuse. I lost, period. There’s no justifying anything I do because there’s no such thing as an excuse. If I came late to practice in High School by one minute because my lockerroom was clear acrossed campus from the wrestling room as opposed to the boy’s lockerroom which was right next to it, we were still sprawling. Anything I did wrong, everyone was sprawling. It got to the point where I stopped trying to stop, I knew it would be all my fault anyway and we’d all still be doing sprawls regardless. Learned helplessness I believe is the term.

So eventually everything that happened and everytime coach would ask me for an explanation, I’d just hang my head and appologize and go in my corner to start sprawling either alone or with the team. Explanations are excuses.

I still feel like I’m making excuses. I’m a looser.

Why am I still intimidated by Coach Garriot though? It’s not like he’s Brogden, Brogden doesn’t exist anymore! He’s out of my life! Why can’t I let go? Coach Garriot doesn’t mark us absent if we don’t say “here SIR” during role call. Coach Garriot only asks that we respectfully call him “Coach,” and most of the guys still only call him “Garriot,” and he still answers. It’s not like Coach Garriot laughs at our own inovations of moves, he encourages them. When Coach Garriot says “Aight Boys,” he doesn’t sound a thing like Brogden.

I would seldom look at Coach if he walked by for the first few weeks of practice, and I only spoke if absolutely necesarry. When I did speak to him, it was always ” ’scuseme sir…” “yes sir,” “thank you sir,” even though he always talks with a smile. It’s getting a lot better because of the little things this coach does that make me relax around him.

For instance, I had a by the first round, and coach told me “you got a by this time kid okay?” I dunno, something about the way he called me kid made me relax. It’s probably me being girly and reading into things, but it just kinda put me at ease.

Other things like when I improved my school loop time from 13:51 to 12:24, he told me good job. That sounds stupid, but Brogden never told me good job about anything, he only berrated boys who got beat by me.

Hopefully I’ll relax as season goes on, hopefully I’ll learn to stop being so negative and beating myself up so much, and hopefully I’ll do better next friday.

No Politics, Just Wrestling

*note about post-dates, most of the dates are a day ahead seeing as the posts themselves were most likely written after midnight.

Yesterday’s practice was pretty tough. We drilled leg-turks and wrestled 3 rounds live. In a way its easier than high school seeing as we don’t have a heater and we don’t just pair up and wrestle rounds for 2 hours. We learn techniques and we drill constantly, so in a way we get more milage out of our practices than if we were to just bash each other all day.

After practice was the tough part though.

“Aight, remember the school loop you guys did yesterday?….You’re going to run that again BUT this time you have to beat your time or you run it over again until you do.”

OH CRAP!

I ran that thing in 12:24. It’s probably not a full 2 miles but it feels like 4 when you’re tired.

Coach Garriot told me that as long as I keep showing up and working hard like I’ve been doing, that he’ll take me to tournaments. Brogden took me to 3 tournaments in 2 years…I mean 2 tournaments, my bad. He also found some people who are willing to employ the wrestlers for temporary grunt work, and even though I could get better jobs, I asked for the number so that I could make friends on the wrestling team.

Gosh Coach Garriot is funny. Today after practice he sat us down for another one of his inspirational speeches in which he had previously instructed us to learn how to just nod and smile and tune him out (lol). He talked to us about our health, and how we need to take care of our bodies, eat the right foods and stuff.

“Guys, I know you’re broke!” he said with a smile, “I’ve been there, living with 9 guys in two bedroom where we had to have parties in the winter just to stay warm!”

His advice: get like 15 guys together, pitch in a couple bucks a piece and get some pasta and catchup.

“Jesus fed a whole crowd with a loaf of bread and two little fish, imagine what you could do with some pasta and catchup!”

That got some chuckles, but right then, the KOTC fighter who was sitting on the side interupted, “wow Donnie, you’re very inspirational! Just for that, I’m going to go to church AND buy pasta!” LOLOLOLOLOL!!
On a sidenote, I had the honor of wrestling Steven, a 2 time CIF champion, at Alondra pool on Monday. Steven and Daniel are former North High School wrestlers, and we’re all Lifeguards at Alondra Pool. We didn’t have any mats and Alondra Pool has a beach entry, so we wrestled in 2 1/2 feet of water on cement (yeah, really safe, right). I got beat good, but that’s the point, it was good. At one point I had Steven in a front-headlock (which was the only thing resembling a move that I got on him) but didn’t know what to do with it. So yeah I got taken down and reversed and a whole mess of stuff, but everyone was shocked because no one expected me to do very well. Can’t imagine why. So screw Nick Huizar, as far as I’m concerned I got my match.

“Kick His Ass Nicole!”

I go to school in my wrestling clothes. Athletes should always be in athletic attire, but its not that I’m taking to a jock, it’s that I literally have no reason to wear anything else. I get up, go to class, go wrestle, go to sleep, the rest is just details. Today I wore my grappling shorts that I got at the NAGA submission wrestling tournament last year and a rash guard that everyone who trained at Erik Paulson’s Shootfighting Gym wore. It’s funny how I despise women’s form-fitting clothing but yet relish it when its in the form of men’s athletic attire (??).

Today we went over crossface cradles and half-nelsons. The guy I was drilling with was a walk-on like me, most of the people on the team are like me…walk-on’s I mean. So we’re talking and drilling and in the middle of running the half he asks “so what do you feel like being the only girl on the team and all?” I got flipped to my back and then threw my arm under his leg and flipped him over me, then said with ironic conviction as if I were contemplating how he sailed over me in much the same way that a refrigerator wouldn’t,

“I do not know. Guess I just kinda got used to it.”

“Yeah that’s the way it was in high school wasn’t it.”

“Yeah I forgot I was the only girl after my first season.”

I did good when I wrestled him live today. I beat him twice, he beat me twice. I might have beaten him once more but I let go of the hold. I was doing really good and in a way I was afraid that if I beat him he’d stop talking to me. I mean you don’t run through someone you want to keep talking to you. I sorta thought that if he kept getting beat by a girl, he’d pair up with me less because he wouldn’t want others in the room to see him get beat. So he beat me first, then I beat him twice in a row, then he beat me again. There were times where I was pinning him, but I was also in side-control, and man did I want to do an armbar so bad! It was right there, so easy to just sweep into, but this is wrestling, a little different style.

What I hated was when I had to wrestle Mario Bros. again. I’m the lightest walk-on (unfortunately), so coach puts him with me even though he’s like 175. Guess he can’t hang in his own weight. I was pissed, I didn’t want to wrestle this guy, I already kicked his ass in the mock tournament! I asked Coach if I could have a different partner, he asked me if I didn’t like wrestling that guy, I said no, and he said “then you’re going to love this next round.” Mario Bros. went to get some water.

“AIGHT LISTEN UP!” yelled coach, “I want you guys FIGHTING!” and he meant fighting. “I want to see you guys jammin’ elbows, slamming, strait-out dog-fighting, one knuckle punch isn’t going to kill anyone but try not to hurt each other.” The point was to leave everything we have on the mat and to not take it out of that room. Coach was ready to blow the whistle when whaddya know, partner dude was still over getting water.

Coach yelled at that guy big time to get his ass over here, and then he came over to me…

“Kick his ass Nicole, really beat him up.”

I wish I knew that coach meant actually beat him up. I would have gone strait up MMA on his ass. My problem is that its been hardwired in me from years of useless psychotherapy to “never fight” “fighting is wrong” “fighting get’s you in trouble” and the little kid in me doesn’t want to get in trouble. Dammit, I want to get in trouble.

Wrestle! I clubbed him, pushed him, suplexed him and jammed his head into the mat. I threw my hooks in and hipped-down hard cracking his back and I sunk a brazillian jiu jitsu rear-naked choke on him (very illegal in wrestling) and he just stopped wrestling! I had it in good, and he didn’t know how to tap, so his whole body just stopped moving and his arms even stopped flailing. If I would have had another 10 seconds, he would have been out cold. I hope that guy quits.

We went to get our running shoes on and we did a school loop, about 2 miles, for time. I did mine in 13:50, but some of the bigger guys were finishing faster than me, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly two miles or not because 13:13 was my best time for the two mile and I felt like I was running a lot slower today than I was when I ran those times.

I was spent though, today was a good practice.

1-1 at Mock Tournament (That Means I Won A Match!)

I went 1-1 at today’s mock wrestling tournament. That means I won one match and lost one. Every Friday the team has a mock wrestling tournament where they simulate an actual wrestling meet. We bring our singlets and headgear and everything like we’re going to a meet and we have a wrestling tournament against our teammates. It’s mental preperation and is used to cure competition anxiety, which I suffer from chronically.

There were three mats with score cards and everything. Coach drew up weight pools and we all had bout sheets. Before we started the tournament, coach ran us through the warmup procedure of what we would do at tournaments to warm up. We partnered up and wrestled a live match, 1-1-1 (one minute periods). I took him down with a leg trip but he had me in a wizzer so he was able to get behind me even though practically my entire body was behind him except for my shoulder. Must remember that move. I got pretty worked but your first match is always supposed to be your worse.

Everyone was getting paired up and I was anxious to find out who my first match was, I was excited all the way up until I heard who my guy was. You know that one guy on your sports team who just came out on walk-on’s looking for some self esteem, is kinda funny looking and kinda gross at the same time? The slow guy who stands too close to you when he talks (which is only when you’re by yourself) and breaths too hard when he’s tired? Every team has one, and I had to wrestle that guy. Nothing against him but this guy looks like Mario from Super Mario Brothers. Short, dumpy, with the mustache and everything. Gross.

I was wearing a singlet underneath my shirt and shorts (the one that Coach gave me from high school that he’s never getting back), but like hell I was going to wrestle this harry weirdo in tights, he might like…enjoy it or something. So I kept my “clothes” on and went out to the middle of the ring to wrestle. The whistle blew and it was live.

This stocky guy started jerking and circling around like he’s getting ready to shoot or do something. We lock up and he stands up high since I’m taller than him. For some reason, I feel a move there and I fall back and flip him over me and he goes flying halfway across the mat before he circles to his feet. A pretty useless move since it didn’t really get us anywhere and didn’t score any points, but hey it looked pretty and it was there. Anything to get the other guy moving around or psych him out a little. First period ends, I go top.

What fucked me up in the Downey vs. Warren match in high school was the fact that in the midst of all the adrenaline and screaming crowd and ref, I lined up on the wrong side. It was the right side according to anyone else because everyone else rides on their opponents left side so they can utalize their strong right side to hold them down. I’ve found that since I suck either way, it makes my life a whole lot easier if I just line up on my opponents right side (the side that they don’t drill all their escapes on). Since I use my right leg more than I use my right arm, it makes it a lot easier for my right leg to be closer to my opponents legs than having to jump all the way acrossed their body to hook the leg in like i would do from my right side. It would throw wrestlers off when they’d be so used to all of their right-handed training partner’s lining up on their left side and here I come and line up on their right side. But for some reason at that Downey/Warren match that the entire school came out to support, I lined up on the left side without realizing it. The guy stood up, reversed me, and I got pinned in front of the entire school.

I almost made the same mistake today for some reason. The liveliness of the match did something and I almost lined up on the wrong side again. Luckily I stopped and remembered and got to the other side, where the guy couldn’t stand up, I hooked my right leg and then my left, got him in a half-nelson and came over the top of him for a pin in the first 10 seconds of the second period. That was pretty cool because I got my hand raised and everything. I won!

After I got up and went off the mat, the guy I warmed up with slapped me five and said sarcastically “I knew you had him.”

At least I won’t have to wrestle that guy again. It’s not like its that big of a deal that I beat him, everyone else beat him pretty quickly. But then again so did I, so what does that say about me I guess.

My next match was, of all people, Sean, who didn’t go as hard as he could have partially because he was bummed from losing his first match. This will be Sean’s fifth year wrestling, this will be barely my third. Whistle blew and Sean and I got after it. Sean’s good, very technical and knows what he’s doing. I’m being aggressive and focusing primarily on keeping my balance while trying not to get taken down. Sean didn’t take me down immidiately either. He attempted some shots which he missed and I reshot and we both scrambled to our feet with no points awarded. I was doing a lot better than I thought I would have. Sean did a leg sweep which I thought wasn’t working because it wasn’t moving me, I thought I was safe, but his persistence paid off and he didn’t let go of the technique, and once I moved he adjusted with me and it ended up working afterall. All the times I went top went to a stalemate because Sean just tripoded up and couldn’t get me off him, yet I couldn’t move him. He rocked me on bottom though, but there was one time where I did get him to go to his back. I couldn’t keep him there though. I lost like 7-3. Pretty bad but at least I didn’t get pinned and at least I didn’t get teched. It’s good to see my cradle escape still works. Sean can go easy or treat me like a girl or do whatever he wants simply because we used to be teammates. Nothing else matters.

When we start going over bottom stuff is when I know I’ll start getting better. I suck at bottom and have a tendancy to use 50% moves that get me reversed a lot (darn it). overall this mock tournament went pretty well and even if I didn’t win much, I think I at least won some people’s respect.

I also learned today that the bigger wrestler isn’t always the better wrestler. I saw tall, skinny guys pin stocky, buff guys and I saw wrestlers with puny arms beat up guys with huge bicepts. I saw little guys get their asses kicked all match and then come back in the end to pin their guy. It really was anyone’s game, the winner was truly unpredictable this time. Proof I guess that the wrestler with the bigger arms doesn’t necisarrily equal the wrestler with the higher score.

I broke a rule though, a cardinal rule today that I feel like an idiot for. I told a guy “good job.” You don’t understand, that’s really bad when someone a lot worse than you tells you good job, especially when you got pinned. The thing is that people who are good tell people who are not as good as them “good job,” commonly winner’s tell the looser good job, but to some scrub who walks on the team and tells a wrestler good job, that’s almost insulting, and I said it to a guy. Dammit! He stopped for a second too, you could tell I broke a rule. It was just one of those awkward things that hung in the air, and I’m afraid he won’t speak to me again.
After all the light guys were done on Mat 3, the assistant coach and the KOTC fighter squared up for a match. Me and one other guy ran it and we were all just dumb freshmen. I was afraid the KOTC fighter was going to come and eat me because I gave the other guy near-fall. It was fun though. The Team Captain, Brandon, is having a party this weekend that the whole team is invited to. Not sure if I’m going to go, I don’t usually do well at social events. But I’m thinking it might not be a bad idea to go out and get to know the team, let them get to know me a little. Worse comes to worse they won’t think any better of me than they already don’t, at best they might just think I’m okay. I’ll see, I need to force myself to go out on limbs.

Wrestling With The Past

I wrestled my old teammate Sean today, I was tired but refused to sit at the side. My leg rides still kinda work on him, they work on most every Warren Wrestler. But Sean’s good, former Varsity 145’s. However, apparently he was never part of the Nicole Basher’s Club.

“C’mon Nicole, come on, keep going,” he kept encouraging. I kept struggling….

“Remember Huizar?” That did it. I started going. “Remember Heredia?” I kept going. “Remember all those bastards that used to make fun of you? C’mon Nicole.” I went till the end of the round and practice ended.

I remember Huizar. The Varsity 160lbs High School All-American. Tall and ectomorphic with stringy muscles that were too big for his small bones and looked like they’d been thrown on a coat-hanger, but in spite of his body type he was buff. I learned how to leg-ride by watching him. I watched how he would wrestle in a way that was completely different from the way I’d seen everyone else wrestle. He would use his legs as opposed to his arms to expend less energy and wear his opponents down without moving much himself. He’d be glued to his opponents backs like a turtle shell. He was a master at the guillotine, the move where you pull their arm behind your head and lock up their legs with your’s so that their back is on the mat and they have no way to move. Devastating.

I remember how I picked up Huizar’s style in high school. I was trying to break my partner down to his stomach from his knees by chopping his arm like Coach told us too. That wasn’t working and it was starting to piss me off. Finally I said fuck it and just jumped on the guy and somehow hooked my legs in. The guy flattened out and I became a leg-rider, a prestigious title to have in the world of wrestling because only a small number of wrestlers actually leg-ride, and the one’s who do it good are among the elite. Iowa University, the top wrestling school in the nation, teaches a lot of leg riding. Brazilian Jiu jitsu, the submission fighting style that I came out of, is exclusively leg-riding.

I remember when I started pinning guys with leg-ride half nelsons in high school. It was really cool when I started winning in the room. My legs became things of power to be feared, but they were also shaky planks easily taken down (darn being tall). I also remember Huizar telling me to stop leg riding because I wasn’t any good at it. What did he know? He never wrestled me. I never got my match against him. The Team Captain.

Huizar graduated, I dropped out, both class of 2005. He went onto Columbia University to become a sports agent; I went onto Cerritos to be a journalist. Maybe someday I’ll be in some exotic place writing for National Geographic and he’ll be sitting in a desk bored with his life, or maybe someday he’ll be signing the biggest names in the NFL and I’ll be sitting in a desk at a publishing co. bored with my life. Who knows. Huizar never accepted me, and therefore no one accepted me. He pushed all my friends on the team away from me because he kept saying they liked me, and everyone knew he was doing it, but no one said anything.

Watching the guys on the Cerritos team beat each other down and then pick each other up is encouraging though. In high school, no one cares if you fall. No one pushes you while you’re running, no one helps you if you’re stuck, and no one yells at you to move your ass unless they’re going to get in trouble if you don’t. Here, you jog with your head down, and in a few moments someone will inevitably slap you on the back and tell you to keep your head up. It could be just the fact that I’ve only been on the team for a few weeks, but I think a lot of people on the Cerritos Team have similar stories to tell from parts of their lives. Stories where they too were beat up and pushed down and humiliated. At this level, wrestlers have to be not just tough, but hardened. Hard lives make hard athletes, I have a feeling we can secretly all relate to each other.