After getting a little taste of his wrestling abilities last
time, I decided that it would be great to see him in action again. This
practice was marked the last practice for the Orange Crush program. So it was
bit less drills and a bit more “live” action. They started off playing some
practice game called “dead ant” where you have to pull your opposing team
members out of this giant circle. That seemed fun for Jayden as he felt free to
express himself by screaming at the top of his lungs as his opponents dragged
him across the mats.
After that, he was able to show off his wrestling skills in
groups of five. This is one-on-one matches and then the winner would take on
the next opponent. Generally, these wrestlers were different shapes and sizes
and had different wrestling styles. Jayden was not only the biggest in size,
but also the most experienced and possibly the oldest in this group of five, so
it was nice to see how he addressed each challenger. Once he stepped onto the
mat he minimal trouble pinning each of his opponents three to four times. This
is credited a larger part to his strength and attributes, but I’d also like to
point out his technique. I’m not a wrestler and probably know nothing about it,
but I did like his approach. He took more of a passive/defensive approach and allowed
his opponents to make the first move for him to then counter properly and
dominate. He kept his focus on the opponents’ hips and watched which direction
they were moving. He didn’t utilize any leg tactics in his matches, but that
was merely due to lack of necessity.
To conclude the practice, the coach sat the athletes down
and provided an inspirational speech and advising them to continue to practice
and focus on not only wrestling but the other important things in life.
His first tournament or set of matches is on 11/18/2013, so
I might be able to attend that and see him in action.
No smoothies this time around.
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