What I took away from my first tournament with F&M:
If I was told on Friday that we would come out of the weekend with 80% of the team earning one win or better and we would have 5 legitimate placing threats and 2 guys eventually making the podium I would have gladly taken those results and called it a success. The funny thing is that after experiencing that exact scenario play itself out on Saturday I couldn’t help but feel like we didn’t perform at our best and we could have done much better. That doesn’t mean that I wasn’t impressed by what I saw from our guys (every one of them showed signs of improvement both mentally and physically), it just means that I believe they are only starting to scratch the surface of their potential and they are capable of so much more in the future. This assessment was something I put a lot of thought into over the last few days. Was I being too harsh on them? Were there breakdowns in coach/wrestler communications? Did I have unrealistic expectations for the team? I decided I would sleep on it and revisit everything in the morning.
6hrs and 3 Megan Fox dreams later I came to my conclusion. There was no outcome, short of 10 champions, that would have fully satisfied me coming out of the Clarion Tournament. There probably will never be an outcome that will make me say “Ay dios mio, Perfecto, Perfecto!” I then found myself thinking that this epiphany might actually make me a bad person/coach/mentor. Panic ensued. One NJ bagel w/ cream cheese later I concluded that the reason I could never be 100% satisfied with the outcome of a competition was not because I was an unrealistic egomaniacal dictator, but because of the potential I see in our wrestlers and the belief I have in every one of them that they can achieve great success in our sport.
After all of this soul searching I concluded that if I was guilty of anything it was guilty of being the eternal optimist, of believing that each one of my wrestlers can achieve and surpass all of their goals. My job as a coach is to now figure out how I can unlock each wrestler’s potential and get them to believe in themselves. Once that is done, they can finally go out and compete at their best. Clearly this past weekend was not only a learning experience for the wrestlers, but for me as well.
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