Self Esteem 101
“I can’t”
Ask any of the young athletes from our program and they’ll tell you, these words have no place in our practice.
When a new wrestler says “I can’t, coach” they really mean, “I haven’t learned how yet, coach” or “I haven’t pushed beyond my comfort zone yet, coach.”
Wrestling is a sport that teaches you what you CAN accomplish.
Is it easy? I don’t think many of our wrestlers would call it that, but just about all of them would tell you it’s worth it. It’s not easy because in order to stand on your own out there, you need to learn what you’re capable of on your own. There are no teammates to push you through the competition. So we push them. We nudge them outside of what they thought they could do, outside of their comfort zone.
Sometimes that is difficult for young athletes, but we help them surge anyway. We know that what’s on the other side of the struggle is life changing for them. When they realize their “boundaries” are imaginary and can be broken, they start to thrive in other arenas.
It’s not just wrestling
We guide our wrestlers to be great wrestlers, but not JUST to be great wrestlers. When you learn that you are capable of excelling through difficulty the way wrestling teaches, all of a sudden everything outside of wrestling gets a bit easier to do the same.
We hear a lot about how wrestling makes great football players. With over 200 NFL players backing that statement up, it holds weight. Coaching youth football, I’ve been fortunate enough to witness this first hand. But it’s not just football, it’s just about everything!
While coaching baseball I can see how much easier it is for the wrestlers to be coached into good techniques. How their body control allows them to make athletic plays. How their self esteem leads to better at bats. When you’ve battled an opponent 1 on 1 to see who can control who, stepping up to the plate is far less daunting. These athletes believe that they’re capable of hitting that ball, making that play, or anything else. They’ve learned that achieving difficult goals is more than probable, it’s a way of life.
Academics
The greatest reward is hearing from parents that wrestling changed their students classroom performance. It makes sense, carrying that extra self esteem sure does make taking a test seem like less of a big deal. They’ve already been tested in a difficult arena and learned to persevere. Paying attention in class becomes easier when you get to burn off so much energy in such a structured format all winter long. There’s a reason that so many NCAA wrestling finalists are Academic All-Americans, Scholar Athletes of the year, and why Ivy League schools perform so well in wrestling. The harder you push yourself in this sport, the easier pushing your self in other arenas becomes.
-Coach Kevin
Ready to make everything else in life seem just a little bit easier?
