Sprawl

“Sprawl!”
There was a chorus of thumps and thuds as 25 bodies hit the floor.
Welcome to wrestling practice.

Wrestling practice took place in the aptly named wrestling room. The wrestling room was tiny, maybe 30 feet by 30 feet. The floor was padded with red wrestling mats, on which were the starting circles. There were nine circles in three rows of three. The walls were padded as well in case anyone was driven into them. The door was open and the room was cool, but only for a short while. As soon as practice started, the door was shut, the heat turned up, and the room got very, very hot, very, very fast.

Some of the wrestlers wore practice singlets similar to the uniform that they would wear in an actual match. I didn’t. Instead, I wore the red nylon shorts with “B’ville Wrestling” stitched into the right leg. I wore a gray t-shirt with two wrestlers in the referee position on the front with the words Baldwinsville Wrestling in red print. Both of these were holdovers from my two years on the modified wrestling team in 7^th and 8^th grade. I wore a kneepad on my right knee because it was my shooting leg and it was susceptible to mat burn. I wore black wrestling shoes with a smooth bottom, similar to dance shoes. Street shoes could stick on the mat, injuring a wrestler or damaging the mat.

Drills started with the drop step drill. I started in the traditional wrestler’s stance- strong foot slightly forward, knees bent, back straight and head forward. I would push off my rear foot, dropping down to my strong knee. My rear leg would slide forward and become the forward leg. The end position was almost like being knighted, except I was down on my right knee. I started at one end of the room and go all the way across the room, turn around, and do it all the way back. Five times each way. This is how I was supposed to shoot in for my takedowns. This was convenient because after the drop step drill were the takedown drills.

For takedown drills, I partnered up with my friend Josh since we were about the same size. I was 5’7” and 120 pounds while he was 5’9” and 125 pounds. The drop step allowed me to shoot in deep and have a solid grip for whatever takedown I was practicing. There was the double leg takedown, which is exactly what the name implies. I would grab both legs and sweep my opponent off his feet, using my head as a pivot point to turn him to one side. There was the single leg takedown, which was just like its double leg brother. There was the fireman’s carry, where I would grab my opponent’s arm as I shot in. I would grab the same leg as the arm and pick him up on my shoulders, like a fireman, and roll him back wards, scoring the takedown.

Now I was sweating heavily. My breathing was heavy and my heart was going fast. Making matters worse was the fact that my partner was supposed to resist my takedowns. Takedowns became a lot more difficult when there was 125 pounds falling onto my shoulders. Back and forth we went, sometimes getting the takedown, sometimes not.

Takedowns took a lot of energy, but escaping and reversals took a lot more. I would start on the bottom, Josh on top. When the whistle blew, it was my job to get away or reverse him and get on top. His job was to make sure I didn’t. More often than not, it was a race to see whether or not I could sit through before he would drive into me, putting me on my stomach. Once one of those invents happened, we stopped and started over.

I was hot and wet, and I was tired beyond belief. Practice wasn’t over yet. All I got was a two-minute water break. I staggered out of the room with some other wrestlers into the hallway. I stood against the wall and allowed myself to slide down to the floor. The air was several degrees cooler there than inside the wrestling room. “All right ladies! Back in the room,” yelled Coach Porillo.

Free wrestling was about to start. If there was a meet the next day, this was when it was determined would wrestle in contested weight classes. It was just like a real wrestling match. There were three, three-minute rounds. The first round, both wrestlers were standing. Both wrestlers would try for the takedown and then the pin. In the second round, one wrestler was on the bottom, the other on top. The third round was the same as the second, except the positions were reversed. If at any point there was a pin, both wrestlers started over in whatever position they were in at the beginning of the round.

The matches were like running as fast as I could for nine minutes. They just sucked the energy right out of me. Sometimes, there were two matches and I could barely move.

But that wasn’t the end of practice. Oh no, I still had to endure the cardio portion of practice. This was essentially 20 minutes of hell. I had been pushing myself for over an hour and a half. Practice pushed me to my limit, and cardio blew me right through it.

Cardio started off with me in wrestler’s stance. “Go,” shouted Coach Porillo. I started sprinting in place. There was pattering all around the room as all the other wrestlers did the same. It took about five seconds for my lungs and leg muscles to start burning. “Sprawl,” yelled the coach. I shot my legs back and fell to my stomach, landing with a thud. There were thuds and thumps all around. Sprawling was how I defended against a takedown. I shot back up in an instant, returning to sprinting in place. A few seconds later, “Sprawl!” I threw myself to the ground then back up again. “Sprawl!” Down and back up. Sweat was running down my face. It was dripping off strands of my hair. “Sprawl! Sprawl! Sprawl,” the coach yelled out one after the other, barely letting me get to my feet before sending me back down to my stomach. “Sprawl! Down!” This was another part of hell. I had to do ten push-ups whenever the coach decided that he hated us. Every time the coach called “down” I yelled back with the appropriate number. I was soon back up and running in place. “Sprawl! Down!” I did ten more push-ups. “Hold it!” I had to hold the down position of the push-up. Push-ups were difficult when I couldn’t feel my arms any more, and holding the down position was even harder.

This went on for ten minutes. Practice still wasn’t over yet. Right outside the door to the wrestling room was a stairwell. There was a flight of stairs going up three floors, with 18 steps between each floor. I remember this because counting stairs was the only way I could keep going. The cooler air did nothing to stop the burning in my lungs, and every breath couldn’t possibly be deep enough. My legs were on fire, but running didn’t take me any further from the flames. I would get tunnel vision, and count the steps one by one. Cancer patients are told to take it one day at a time. I took stairs as one step at a time. At the beginning, I would look forward to the down step, but it didn’t take long for me to hate those as well and yearn for the moment when the coach would yell out, “one more time, ladies! One more time and you’re done!”

At any point during all of this, I could’ve stopped. I could’ve not tried so hard for the take down, or for the escape. I could’ve let my partner pin me for a few seconds of respite. I could’ve not sprinted as hard in the wrestling room, or done the push-ups a little bit slower so that I didn’t actually do ten. I could’ve collapsed when I was holding the down position using exhaustion as an excuse, and nobody would’ve thought twice. I could’ve taken the stairs slower. I could’ve not pushed myself so hard.

But really, I couldn’t. Pushing myself that hard was all on me. I had to prove to myself that I could do it. That’s what I loved about wrestling. Despite the fact that I was on the wrestling team, wrestling was an individual sport. When I was out on the mat, there was me and the other guy. I didn’t have a guy in right field to make a spectacular diving catch to save my no-hitter. There wasn’t a wide receiver I could blame for dropping a pass right to the numbers. There wasn’t someone relying on me to be perfect. It was up to me and me alone to go out there on the mat and put up the ‘W.’ This independence allowed someone like me to go out and compete with a sort of wild abandon. I’d leave everything on the mat, and it was either good enough or it wasn’t. There was a beautiful simplicity in competing in wrestling.