Tanner's Wrestling Tournament

Tanner is the one without shoes...most of the younger kids don't have wrestling shoes...not worth the expense I guess!

Tanner had his first wrestling tournament last night. He hasn't ever wrestled before but he wanted to do it this year. He hasn't shown a huge interest in sport so we were pretty excited that he wanted to do something besides video games! He has done surprisingly well during practice. This kid in the picture was his first real opponent, and let's just say it wasn't a good first experience. I know nothing about wrestling and could tell that this kid was playing dirty. We video-taped it watching it over again last night was pretty tough. The opponent kept putting him in a choke hold and the ref wouldn't call anything (before they started the ref was saying how he had never had to ref before-they were young high school kids). I even thought Tanner had the kid pinned but they weren't watching very good.

Tanner was crying by the time they were done and said he was never wrestling again. It took Nick bribing him with gatorade to get him to try again. He pinned his next guy pretty fast. His last guy was a pretty good match-up. Tanner ended up winning by points.

It was supposed to be a double-elimination tournament but he only wrestled 3 times and lost once, so I'm not sure what all happened. It was frustrating that it was teenagers running the show. The "coach" hardly came over to Tanner's area (he stayed with the older kids). They said he took 3rd...not sure how they determined that, but he was happy to have placed.

All in all I was proud of Tanner for not quitting even when he wanted to. He is a tough little stinker and I loved watching him. Wrestling is a good way for him to channel some of his anger. :) Hopefully the next tournament has better refs.