My
first few tournaments I was on the JV squad and I wanted to be on
varsity so I had to beat a varsity wrestler. I couldn't even come
close to beating the guy at my real weight and the next weight up was
also tricky so I went up two weight classes to wrestle for varsity.
The kid was not as good and he was the one who was dating my
ex-girlfriend that I had made fun of after the pin myself incident.
He was a bit of a jerk to her and she had called me onetime to talk
about how she wanted to break up with him but she was scared of him.
I had helped her work up a plan that she had ultimately backed out of
but he had heard that I was in on the deal and there was some bad
blood. We had no practice on the days that we were wrestling for
promotion and everyone was supposed to sit and watch even if they
were not wrestling. My opponent and I were almost in the middle so it
had been about a nervous hour of fidgeting when we were called up. I
was really nervous when we were lined up and the coach that was
reffing whistled us to start. I was taken down and that was the end
of the nerves and the start of the battle. He got around and took my
back and it felt like he was trying to push my head under my armpit.
To gain leverage he laced both of his legs over the top of mine. It
seemed to me that my best option for escape was to stand up with him
in this piggy back position and jump backwards onto him. That was a
good plan save for one little niggle, it was evidently illegal to
slam someone down from that height. I was also trapping his hands so
that he had no way of breaking our combined fall and I landed with all
of my weight on his chest. The coach hadn't stopped me in time
because he thought I knew the rules and he quickly pulled me off of
my opponent as he tried to help him get his wind back and there was a
general murmur of of disapproval. One of the old timer kid asked me
what the hell was I doing, that move was illegal, I mentioned that I
was not aware of that and no one cared. After about half a minute he
was back to breathing smoothly and sitting up and the coach was
asking if he wanted to keep fighting. He said yes and was given a few
more minutes to recover. When we were restarted in a neutral standing
position and my rival was really pissed. At the whistle he came
running at me. More by shock than by training I was perfectly like
water and effortlessly caught his charge locked my hands around his
head and behind his knee in a standing cradle, rolled back and pinned
him. Most of the room had not been paying attention and most of the
other guys were pretty surprised to see the match was over, by fall
no less. That meant I was the varsity wrestler at my weight class for
at least the next four meets until we had another wrestle off for
position. I was thinking this is what I wanted but all of the sudden
it hit me that I would have to wrestle prime time wrestlers in front
of the small but larger crowds at varsity meets. Oops.
