Put Me in Coach: Single-leg takedown not a good idea

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on February 14, 2015 11:23 PM

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I've always admired high school wrestlers.

Way back in the day, when I was in high school seven years ago, I used to watch my school's two best wrestlers -- they were twins -- walk in to school everyday in sweats with trash bags over top of them. They would spend the entire day looking ridiculous at the expense of cutting down a few pounds of water weight so they could wrestle that night.

One of them told me he even rocked that look while doing pushups and sit-ups inside a sauna, which, I'm not a doctor, but I can't imagine that is good for your health. I heard that and knew I was never going to take part in high school wrestling.

Alas, here I was walking into Rosewood's wrestling room -- a sweatbox -- in sweats.

A couple of the wrestlers recognize me, whether it be from covering them in football or wrestling, but they're used to seeing me in slightly more professional clothes.

Just two wrestlers choose to walk up to me and ask what's going on.

Sammy Drew is the first.

"You're going to practice with us?" he asks incredulously.

"I guess I have to," I respond.

"It's pretty hard," he points out the obvious.

Pretty hard. Pretty hard in the same sense that Frodo Baggins protecting and destroying the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was "pretty hard."

No Lord of the Rings fans here? Tough crowd.

Right before practice starts with a 20-minute run in an 85-degree room, Kaleb Taylor walks up to me asks, "are you sure you want to do this?"

I can not stress enough how much I do not want to do this. But as my stepdad used to tell me when I didn't want to take the trash out on trash day, it's one of those things you don't want to do but you just have to. But only, instead of trash piling up inside my house, if I don't do this I sort of find myself on that unemployment line thing.

The 20-minute run takes what feels like an hour. I manage to keep a nice steady pace so my chest doesn't explode. The cool thing about running in such a small room is no one can tell how many times you've been lapped but the wrestlers like they could if we ran on the track. But for the sake of fun, I counted.

Evan Riess, who I'm pretty sure is part terminator-part human, passed me 23 times in 20 minutes.

After the run we do some pushups and sit-ups. We start with 12 of each and then go down to 11 of each, and so on all the way down to one. Sometimes the wrestlers change their pushup grips or the ab workout. Notice I said the wrestlers change their grips, because I did not. I can not do and will not try to do a one-handed pushup because I'm trying to savor what little dignity I have left.

That was the warm-up.

Apparently.

I sit the next couple of plays out. I'm not trying to board the vomit train just yet.

They do some one-on-one wrestling moves -- holds and submissions. Things I have no clue how to talk about. So, I just won't.

But after those drills they break into groups of six where each wrestler will take on the other five teammates one at a time until four minutes is up. I'm invited into Drew's group and make it seven. At first, Reiss asked me to join his group (I felt so popular), but that group was the heavyweights and I surely would have died.

Drew's group is closer to my weight class.

I'm actually about to step into the circle and wrestle these kids.

"Well Allen," you may wonder. "what if you would have hurt those kids?"

My answer: Depending on how fast you can read this sentence, you will learn almost as quickly as I did that I was not going to hurt those kids.

I ask Sammy Drew what the heck I was supposed to do since I have never wrestled before. He takes me to the side and teaches me how to shoot on someone's leg to start a takedown. He quickly learns that even the most basic tactic is too difficult for me.

"Just try not to get pinned," he says.

Good advice, but it didn't work.

The first wrestler takes me down and pins me in less than 30 seconds. I need to work on my squirming.

Sammy Drew comes up to me right after and tells me the next time someone shoots at my legs all I need to do is push their head into the mat.

No really, push their face into the mat. It's a legal move. And it worked like a charm on my next trip in the circle. I use the trick to get out of one takedown and lasted closer to 45 seconds before I get taken down again.

"You lasted longer that time," Drew says smiling.

I sense that there's a joke to be made in there, but I'm too tired to speak.

I wrestle five of the six kids. They all take me down with relative ease and pin me. A freshman who weighs 20 pounds less than me suplexed and pinned me like I was a rag doll. In the five matches, I lasted a combined three minutes. Maybe.

At one point after being taken down, I tried to counter into a headlock. I later learned that straight headlocks are not legal in wrestling. Do you believe that? What's next? Are kicks to the gut followed by Stone Cold Stunners not legal? Are flying elbows off the top rope not legal? This is nothing like the wrestling I grew up with.Finally my last match of the day comes.

It's against Drew.

The master faces off with his student. Albeit the master is about eight years younger than his student so it's a weird juxtaposition.

I sought advice from Malique Boyd on how to face Drew, being as I learned all the little bit I know from Drew himself. Boyd's advice was great. Drew is wrestling with a torn ACL. In an odd turn of events, Boyd told me to not go for the injured knee.

"He'll be expecting that," he said.

So I enter the squared circle full of unwarranted confidence. At least a few pairs of eyes are focused squarely on our match. Someone even cheers for me.

"Malique told me to go for that injured knee of yours," I tell Drew.

Reverse psychology works every time.

"Works for me," Drew says.

I squirm away from two attacks and finally I see my chance. I make a move on his good knee and I've got it off the ground. I'm ready to for the takedown. I've got this.

Holy cow this kid is strong. I don't have this at all. I'm not lifting him or doing anything.

At some point, I don't know how this happened, but Drew rips me off the ground and takes me down with one leg in his hand and the other wrapped by one of his legs. Both of my knees are touching my nose.

I think they call this a cradle. Either way I'm pinned.

There's more conditioning practice to follow, but I've given up.

Wrestling is hard.