The Mat Never Lied to Me

I ran into my high school wrestling coach at a bar the other weekend. I hadn't seen him in years. We talked for a while, caught up on life, and somewhere in the middle of the conversation, I realized I was standing differently. Shoulders back, chin up, talking with a kind of directness that I don't always use in normal life. It was like the version of me that existed in his wrestling room hadn't fully left.

That conversation stayed with me the entire night. I kept thinking about how much of who I am traces back to a sport I haven't competed in for years. Not in a nostalgic way. In a factual one.

The switch

I played football in middle school and had to convince my mom to let me. I was a big kid, and big kids play football. That's just how it works in suburban Pennsylvania. I continued into high school, went through a full season of freshman football, and at the end of it, the coach told me I should try out for the wrestling team. I signed up having no idea what I was walking into.

What most people don't know about Pennsylvania is that it's one of the two or three toughest wrestling states in the country. Nearly five hundred high schools compete. The talent pool is absurd. Growing up in Bucks County, you don't appreciate that until later. You just think that's how wrestling is everywhere. It's not.

The first day I showed up to practice, I walked into the room, looked at the mat, and asked the coach, "What's the circle for?" He just stared at me for a second. I didn't know anything. I didn't know the rules, the positions, the terminology. I didn't even know what the lines on the mat meant. Little did I know that circle was going to become the next six years of my life.

It didn't click all at once. It was gradual. I kept showing up, and I could feel myself getting better. Moving different. Lighter on my feet. The kid committed to Iowa State used to say "fast feet eat," and after a while I started to understand what he meant. The mat was honest in a way nothing else in my life had been. If I lost, it was on me. If I won, it was because of the work I put in. No one to hide behind. No one to blame.

Within weeks I was showing up early and staying late. I stopped thinking about football entirely. By the middle of that first season, wrestling wasn't something I did after school. It was the thing my entire day was organized around. I had never felt that way about anything.

The room at Council Rock North

Council Rock North's wrestling room was not a place that went easy on you.

I showed up as a clueless heavyweight who had just quit football, and the guys in that room raised me. That's the only way I can describe it. They raised me in the sport. There was a kid committed to Navy. Another to Army. Another to UPenn. One of our guys committed to Iowa State and went on to become an NAIA national champion. These weren't just good high school wrestlers. These were future college athletes at the highest levels, and they were in the room with me every single day.

When you're a freshman heavyweight going live with guys like that, you learn fast. Not because anyone sits you down and explains technique. You learn because you get thrown around, you get put on your back, you get humbled, and then you get up and do it again. The learning is in the repetition. The growth is in the suffering.

I think that's the thing most people don't understand about wrestling. The sport doesn't happen at the tournament. The sport happens in the room. Every day, against your own teammates, against the guys who know your moves better than anyone. By the time you step on the mat at a competition, the hard part is already done. You've already wrestled the toughest guys you'll face that week. The match is almost a formality.

My junior year, we took fifth in the state as a team at the PIAA AAA championships in Hershey. Sixty-four points. That was a special group. Five, six guys who all pushed each other every single day. I don't think any of us would have been the same wrestlers without the others. The individual sport has a funny way of being deeply dependent on the people around you.

That year I went 32-9 at 285 pounds. I was seeded sixth at the Powerade Tournament, which is one of the biggest high school wrestling tournaments in the country. I placed seventh at Escape the Rock. I qualified for the state tournament as a junior. For a kid who had walked into a wrestling room for the first time two and a half years earlier with no idea what an underhook was, that was a significant jump. I wasn't a natural. I was just willing to be in the room longer than most people were willing to be uncomfortable.

When they announced my name at the state tournament, I looked up into the stands and found my parents. My mom and dad were jumping up and down, both of them nearly in tears. Two and a half years earlier their kid didn't know what the circle on the mat was for. Now his name was on the bracket at the Giant Center in Hershey. That's the kind of moment that doesn't need words. You just look at each other and you know.

The last match

My senior year happened during COVID. Everything was different. The season started late. Schedules were compressed. Tournaments were restructured. There were no fans in the stands the way there used to be. My parents couldn't be there in person. They watched my matches on a livestream from home.

None of that slowed me down. I went 18-3 in an abbreviated season. I won the District One North championship, beat the finals opponent 8-0. Won the SOL League title. I was ranked sixth in the state at 285 pounds. A two-time state qualifier now, which meant something coming out of District One, the most competitive district in the most competitive wrestling state in the country.

The PIAA had added a new postseason round that year called "super regionals." The idea was to cut down the state tournament field for COVID safety. Instead of twenty qualifiers per weight class, they whittled it to eight. Super regionals was the extra gate. You had to get through districts, regionals, and then this new round just to make it to Hershey. I made it to super regionals as the number two seed in the East bracket. My opponent was a kid I had pinned the week before. I felt good. I knew I could beat him. I'd already proven it.

The match started and I was wrestling my match. At some point I went up for a foot sweep. A basic move. Something I'd done hundreds of times. But the ref called it a slam.

Disqualified.

Just like that. My high school career was over. Not because I got outworked. Not because someone was better than me. Because a referee made a judgment call on a move I'd executed clean a thousand times before. I was winning the match. And then I wasn't in the match anymore.

The arena was nearly empty because of COVID. A handful of coaches, a few officials, the other wrestlers waiting for their bouts. My parents were watching through a screen somewhere, seeing their kid's career end on a call they couldn't even argue in person. I stood on the side of the mat and it hit me. That was it. That was the last time I'd wrestle in a high school singlet.

I walked off the mat and went into the nearest locker room. I don't even know whose locker room it was. I hit one of the lockers hard enough to dent it. And then the tears came. Not the kind you can stop. The kind that come from somewhere deeper than disappointment. I was heartbroken. That's the only word for it. I had given everything I had to this sport. Every early morning, every practice where I got beat up by guys better than me, every choice I made to be in the room instead of anywhere else. And it ended on a call. Not a loss. A call.

There's a particular kind of emptiness that comes from losing when you didn't lose. You didn't get beat. You didn't make a mistake. The thing just ended, and you're left standing there trying to figure out what to do with the energy you still had left for the next period.

I drove home that night and didn't say much. I don't think there was much to say.

Bucknell

I was recruited to wrestle at Bucknell University. Division I. The Patriot League. Walking into that room for the first time was a different kind of feeling than the one I had at Council Rock North. In high school, I was the big kid who was learning. At Bucknell, everyone was the big kid who had been learning for their entire life.

The level jump was real. My freshman year I went 4-11. In high school I was a two-time state qualifier ranked sixth in the state. At Bucknell, I was the guy getting his hand raised less than half the time. That's what Division I does. It recalibrates everything you thought you knew about yourself. But the thing that surprised me most wasn't the athleticism or the technique. It was the practice room wars. Every single day, you're going live with guys who are trying to take your spot. There's no off switch. There's no easy day. You show up and you compete, and then you do it again tomorrow.

One of the guys I went to war with every day in that room was Dorian Crosby. Dorian and I were both heavyweights, which means we saw a lot of each other. He just won a D2 national championship at Gannon University, going 17-0 on the season. When I saw the headline, I smiled but I wasn't surprised. I'd been in the room with him. I knew what he was capable of. Watching someone you trained with accomplish something like that hits different than watching a stranger do it. You know the work that went into it because you were standing across from it every day.

The kid I beat in the district finals my senior year went on to do well at the national level in college. The guys I was in the room with weren't just good. They were future nationally ranked wrestlers. You don't always know that at the time. You just know the room is hard and nobody takes days off.

My roommate from Bucknell is still my best friend. Another one of my teammates is now a four-time national qualifier. The brotherhood that forms in a wrestling room isn't something you can manufacture. It comes from shared suffering. When you've cut weight together, bled together, pushed each other past what you thought you could handle, you don't have to explain the bond to anyone. It just is.

The highs at Bucknell were real. Competing at the D1 level, the travel, the feeling of representing your school on the mat. There's nothing quite like hearing your name called and walking out in front of a crowd, knowing that everything comes down to what you do in the next seven minutes.

The candle at both ends

But I was burning out.

Freshman year went well. D1 wrestling was a massive lifestyle adjustment, but I handled it. My grades were decent despite a loaded schedule of calculus and computer science courses. I had a good roommate and a solid group of friends. I made it through that first year feeling like I'd figured out the balance.

Sophomore year is when the balance broke.

I was double majoring in computer science and economics, wrestling Division I, working an on-campus job, and pledging a fraternity. Each one of those is a full-time commitment. I was trying to carry all four at once. The days started before sunrise and didn't end until long after dark. There was always somewhere I was supposed to be, always something I was behind on. I couldn't talk to my wrestling teammates about how stretched I was because they were locked in on the sport. I couldn't talk to my fraternity brothers about wrestling because they had no idea what that level of physical commitment felt like every morning. No one had the full picture of what I was carrying because I was living in compartments.

From the outside, everything looked great. D1 athlete. Double major. On-campus job. Fraternity. From the inside, the weight of all of it was starting to crush me. The overcommitment was straining my relationship with my mother. The stress was bleeding into every part of my life.

After winter break, I went in to quit wrestling. Before I walked into the coach's office, I stopped by the wrestling room to talk to my practice partner. He was the starting heavyweight and a senior. I told him I was done. That the cycle was breaking me down and I couldn't keep doing this.

He didn't let me quit. He looked at me and made me promise one thing. "Do not quit until I graduate." Partially because he liked wrestling me, and partially for a reason I wouldn't understand until later.

So I promised. And I kept showing up. There were good practices and bad practices. On all of them, good days and bad, he'd look at me and ask the same thing: "What's a man without his word?"

I think he could see the will leaving my eyes. They weren't as sharp as before, didn't carry the same thing they carried freshman year. But he kept asking. And I kept showing up. Because I'd given my word.

I kept it. I wrestled through the rest of his senior season. After he graduated, there was nothing holding the candle together anymore. Mentally and physically, the grind had won. I stepped away from the sport.

That was one of the hardest decisions I've ever made. Not because I was unsure about it. Because I was sure. I knew my body and my mind were telling me something, and I knew that if I kept ignoring it, I'd end up resenting the thing I loved most. I didn't want that. I'd rather walk away from wrestling still loving it than drag myself through two more years and leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

The man in the arena

There's a quote by Theodore Roosevelt that I think about more than any other:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming."

That's wrestling. That's the whole sport distilled into a paragraph.

When you're on the mat, there is nowhere to hide. The scoreboard is right there. Everyone can see you. You are either fighting or you are not. You are either getting back up or you are not. The critic doesn't exist in that moment. There's only you, the guy across from you, and the work you did or didn't do to prepare.

I haven't competed in years. But that feeling hasn't left me. That inability to quit. That refusal to watch from the sideline when I could be in the arena. It shows up in everything. The way I approach my work. The way I train now. The way I handle problems that feel too big. Some part of me is always back on the mat, down on points, looking at the clock, and deciding to keep going anyway.

Wrestling didn't teach me how to win. It taught me how to lose and come back. It taught me that the view from the side of the mountain is earned, not given. It taught me that the hardest opponent you'll ever face is the version of yourself that wants to stop.

I ran into my coach at a bar and stood a little taller. That's not a metaphor. That's what the sport does to you. It becomes part of how you carry yourself, how you show up, how you respond when things go sideways. I haven't worn a singlet in years but I'm still a wrestler. I think I always will be.