Don't Tell Me!

I know everyone's talking about it, but please don't mention to me who won the Illinois state wrestling championships last weekend. At least not for the next eight to ten weeks.

I don't know why I have this habit of developing hobbies that I'm slightly embarrassed about. The latest example of this is my interest in high school wrestling. I was a wrestler in high school, so it's not a completely random hobby, but in the last two years, after a 16-year hiatus, I have become re-acquainted with the sport of my youth. This time, however, my involvement is merely that of a fan. Over the past two seasons I've gone to a few local meets and followed the results of wrestlers and teams throughout the state on the Illinois high school wrestling website.

As fate would have it, the state wrestling tournament is held in Champaign every year, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity to attend it last weekend. It's a two-day orgy of the best wrestling the state has to offer, and I've taken the day off work two years in a row to attend it. I don't know why I feel slightly sheepish about admitting this.

Maybe it's because I was one of the few people sitting in the stands who wasn't currently involved in the sport in some way or wasn't a friend or family member of a participant. I had two people ask me last weekend if my "kid" was competing, and I had to respond, "No, I'm just a fan." Theoretically, there shouldn't be any difference between following local high school wrestling and following something like the NFL, but there is. With the former, there's the expectation that you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't have some vested interest in one of the participants. Following the NFL, on the other hand, is considered a activity in its own right; it's on the list of acceptable hobbies (NFL widows notwithstanding.) I guess my biggest discomfort stems from the fact that it's a lonely hobby-- there aren't many people to share it with. This must be how American soccer fans feel.

The state wrestling tournament, while exciting, is also a frustrating exercise in multitasking. There are six mats set up at Assembly Hall, so you have to divide your attention between six different matches going on at once. If you're a bracket junkie like myself, it means you spend most of the time trying to figure out which match is about to end, so you can write the results into the program that you paid $5 for. Of course, there are marquee matches that you really want to see, so you'll pay more attention to them, to the detriment of your bracket.

After two days of sitting in a plastic seat and watching hundreds of (snippets of) wrestling matches, there were times when I overdosed on the whole thing. But after a short break I was usually read for more action. The state tournament is fun because seasons and careers are ending all around you. You see some kids achieving their lifelong (to that point) goals and some falling just short of them. It can bring out the best and worst in sportsmanship.

I attended every round of the tournament, but had to leave before the finals because Rebecca and I had another event to attend Saturday night. In the lobby they were pre-selling DVDs of the championship matches, so I paid $40 to order a copy for myself. You can imagine my disappointment when the girl who took my money informed me that it would be eight to ten weeks until they sent out the DVDs.

Have you ever recorded a game on TV and hoped to watch it later, all the while trying to avoid any mention of the outcome? I'm going to have to do this with the wrestling DVD, only I'll have to avoid it for 8-10 weeks. Luckily, high school wrestling is not water-cooler conversation fodder, so I should be able to accomplish this, as long as I remember not to go to the wrestling website I spent so much time on before the tournament.

So please keep your discussions of the championship matches to yourself. Thanks!