re: How Many High Schools in Arkansas Have Wrestling

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It's an awesome sport.

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It really is. I was born in California, and lived there until was 10. When I was in 3rd grade, I followed my older brother to his JR High wrestling practice. I could wrestle, and knew I could, because of my brother.

Coach was wary about letting a 3rd grader wrestle with kids 5-7 years older than me, so he said in order to wrestle, I had to be able to do 100 pushups, 200 sit-ups, and spend 5 minutes in an arched position with my back to the mat, only my head and feet touching the mat, rolling my head touching my ear on one side to the other. I did that in about 30 minutes to his surprise, so he let me wrestle. The closest guy on the team to my weight, outweighed me by 25 pounds, which is a lot in wrestling. I pinned him in less than 3 minutes.

So here I am a 3rd grader, who would have the junior high school bus stop at the elementary school to pick me up for meets. By the 4th grade, I was placing and even won a couple of tournaments. Coaches were coming to see me wrestle, because they had heard I was wrestling with the junior high as a 4th grader and winning.

Then we move to Arkansas, and not only is there no wrestling team, there's no football team either. My school played basketball and baseball. Where I was from in California, basketball was for sissies who didn't like to get hit. So baseball was all I had.