Personal Narrative: My First Wrestling Team

I joined my school’s wrestling team during my junior year of high school and went into this new environment with 0 years of prior training and 16 years of “Girls don’t really wrestle”. I was determined to excel during my first wrestling experience to challenge the skepticism that surrounded girl wrestlers. Despite this resolve, I was terrified at the thought of having to actually wrestle someone, so when I found out that my first wrestling match would be against a small, unassuming girl 20 pounds lighter than me, I was relieved. With newfound hope, I went into my match thinking, “How could I possibly lose to someone half my size?”

Two minutes after that I lost to someone half my size.

Despite this notable failure, I went back to practice the next day with a heightened sense of determination. Having faced the harsh truth that wrestling wasn’t going to come to me naturally, I did everything I could to improve my skills. During our team run each day, I pushed myself to be faster than my usual running partner. When we did our pushups, I forced myself to complete one more than I thought I was physically able to do. With the help of my coaches and teammates, I slowly built my repertoire of moves. After every match I had I would go home and watch the video of me wrestling, trying to see where I went wrong. I would come home exhausted each day and would wake up sore every morning. When I finally won my first match, I knew that my hard work had …show more content…
However, the success I felt wasn’t centered around my wins at the tournament, instead focused on the confidence I had gained in my abilities. I no longer felt the need to prove my skills, and had reached a point where I could say I was comfortable with failure as long as I knew I had pushed myself. This newly discovered confidence made all of the hours of work and all of the mental and physical exhaustion I had felt during the season worth