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Soapbox Philosophy: It’s easy to cheer when you know the wrestlers
by Gregory R. Norfleet · Op-Ed · December 14, 2017
There’s nothing like sitting matside during wrestling meets, taking pictures and notes while your legs fall asleep.
I’d rather get up and cheer.
When football season ends, I hate it. West Branch is a football town, and it’s drawn me in so much it surprises me, since I used to have little interest in watching sports.
But then wrestling season starts, and I get drawn into that.
Win or lose, there’s something about watching local boys do battle with other small-town opponents, matching skill against skill, muscle against muscle, and talent against talent in the sport of wrestling.
On the smaller end of the weight classes, from 106 to 138 pounds, you see a lot more movement and, oftentimes, more scoring. In the heavier weight classes, you see a lot less, but, as they say, the bigger they are …
Middle weights are toss-ups — you never know what you’re going to get. In the middle weights, big, less-experienced freshman and sophomores may find themselves facing relatively small but much more experienced upperclassmen, leading to some lopsided scores or surprising wins.
This season we have six football players — Jacob Graves and Jacob Barnhart from varsity and Zach Wright, Morgan Hartz, Harold Blakey and John Yates from junior varsity — on the wrestling team. I’m always interested to see how the football players will fare, because everyone has different jobs on the team requiring different skills, body types, muscles and talent.
Yet reporting for the local newspaper and being father to three boys, I get to meet a lot of the athletes through other ways. Hartz, for example, got his picture in the paper during a science fair. Graves and Barnhart were part of the homecoming court. Blakey and my middle son were on the same junior high wrestling team. Wright and Yates I met through my sons and I can tell you that Wright is an all-around athlete and Yates is very fast and was running with varsity track as a sprinter his first year out.
So knowing what I know about each one, whether a little or a lot, I wonder how those experiences play into their confidence, wrestling styles and aggressiveness on the wrestling mat.
But knowing these guys, even just a little bit, I find myself more invested in how well they do on the mat.
And when I cover sports year in and year out, I get to see these guys grow and get better each time they go out, win or lose.
So when I’m sitting alongside the mat, wearing my reporter’s hat, it’s hard to stay composed. I bite my tongue to keep from shouting out suggestions or encouragement — part of that is because I’m supposed to be working, part of that is because I’m so close it would distract the referees (and I might get kicked out), and part of that is because I don’t want to contradict the coaches yelling instructions from their corners.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t fill up the stands and do it for me.
Gregory R. Norfleet is the editor of the West Branch Times. You may reach him at gregory@westbranchtimes.com or 319-643-2131.
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