Personal Narrative: The Wrestling Room

The room is best described with one word: Sanctuary. When you walk into the room, you’re greeted with the sense nothing else matters inside this room besides one thing and that is improving your skills as a wrestler. Unlike a basketball court or a football field, which are used for many different activities, the wrestling room is for work only. Isolated from the rest of the school with a set of heavy metal doors, the wrestling room contains two full sized mats that cover the floor and go halfway up the walls along with a speaker mounted up in each corner. The parts of the walls not covered in mat, are decorated with either the names of past state-champs and placers or the team state championship banners, which serve as a constant reminder of …show more content…
You were a Perry Meridian wrestler. Being on a team with these kids and going through grueling practices, and spending countless weekends in a gymnasium at wrestling tournaments you start to form relationships with these guys that are one of a kind. In some circumstances these guys end up becoming best friends because they literally spend so much time together you know a lot about one another. There were times we got mad at one another or teased someone a little too hard, but at no point in time was there any real confrontations about where someone came from, or what race someone was, or how someone looked because we all came from the same place. And that was Perry Meridian wrestling. We shared common goals and were ultimately, in our own ways, brothers. “I teach and coach at a public school so it’s various backgrounds social economic differences, some kids have a lot of money, some kids have nothing, some kids come from two parent homes, some kids come from broken homes. We have a large Chin population here so we have a lot of ethnic diversity on the team. We have African Americans, we have Chins, we have Mexican Americans, so we have a lot of differences” (Schoettle). Wrestling is just as much a team sport that is an individual sport. I’ve never felt so close to a group of people in my life and I’ve participated on many other teams. From the time I was eight years old being taught technique by high …show more content…
One of the main differences is that kids are receiving money to wrestle and are actually wanting to be there competing. A lot of the times in high school rooms there are those who are involved in the sports for their own reason such as just wanting to develop athleticism or because some of their friends do it so they decide to join. Also, collegiate wrestling tends to be a little more difficult due to the time commitment having to go to challenging classes. Another difference in college wrestling is that the sport is a lot more physical. There will be times a kid right out of high school, sometimes 17 years old, compete against grown men. The style of wrestling is a lot more physical consisting of nonstop movement and hand fighting. Since I’ve started wrestling at Marian, I’ve noticed that college wrestling is also more technical. Being a higher level of wrestling it only makes sense, but as I continue to wrestle I wonder if a culture will form around the team.
The wrestling culture at Perry Meridian closely resembles a family. It takes a lot of people to create the culture at Perry including the wrestler, coaches, parents, and fans. Having a family behind a group of wrestlers raises their performance, because they know the brotherhood is counting on them. Perry Meridian wrestling is the identity to many who have gone through or were raised by the program. As I transition