#36 - Wrestling Tournament

Our visit to Craig's family in Akron, Ohio brought the opportunity for another new experience. Our nephew had an all-day wrestling tournament.  Since we miss most of our nephews' sporting events, we were glad to get the chance to watch him. I must be honest that, while I've never been to a wrestling tournament before, I have seen snippets of wrestling, and I strongly suspected it was not "my thing." 

The tournament pretty much confirmed that! It was great to visit with our family and to watch our nephew in action, but overall I'm really happy that my boys have not expressed an interest in wrestling.  Still, it was a learning opportunity for me. I learned the very basics of scoring; the ref wears one red wristband and one green wristband. Each wrestler is assigned one of those two colors, and they wear their colored band around their ankle. As the wrestlers score points, the ref raises the appropriately-banded hand, with his fingers indicating the number of points earned.  I also learned about the wrestling world's equivalent of a bat boy. I had no idea that this vital position existed at all.  A boy around 8 years old carried what looked sort of like a giant Q-tip. It was a wooden pole about two feet long, with a padded end all wrapped up in duct tape.  When the time of the match was running out, he would run up to the mat and stand behind the ref. He would watch the clock, and as soon as the time ran out, he would tap the ref on the back with the padded end. It let the ref know to signal that the match was over (because he was busy watching the wrestlers and not the clock).

Our nephew was 2-2 for the day. We spent about 2 hours at the tournament, while his mom had the "pleasure" of spending over 9 hours there! That would be just be too much wrestling for me.  Next time I'm freezing my butt off at an autumn football game, I'll remind myself that I could be spending 9 hours in a smelly gymnasium watching wrestling all day!

By the way, adventure number 36 means that I'm 90% done with my adventures.  It looks very promising that I will indeed accomplish all 40 in my birthday year.  However, being this close to completing my goal brings mixed emotions. It is actually quite sad to be wrapping up this project.  I've had such a great time, and I hate to see it end.  I have 3 of my remaining 4 activities identified. Time and weather will determine if all 3 can be accomplished in January.  If anyone has any great ideas for the remaining unidentified adventure, send your idea my way!