"Tell your children of Him, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation." Joel 1:3

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Wrestling woes

Last night, the boys had their first wrestling meet. Tony, Trae, and Timmy all won matches. Tony only got to do one round (out of the regular three) with his opponant because the other boy started crying and wouldn't continue....I'm laughing as I write that, is that wrong?? Trae pinned his guy...awesome! And Timmy had 2 matches...the first he lost to a tough competion. The second, he pinned....but there's a story there. We were just about done and the coach pulled Timmy to go do an exibition on another mat. He told me this so I could go over and watch. By the time I walked around to the other mat, Timmy was facing off with his new opponant.....a girl. The second girl now to join the wrestling group. This girl was at least 10 or 11 and had on a sports type bra thing under her singlet. Oh great, I thought....I really don't like this. Jason and I had talked to the coach last year about not wanting our boys to wrestle girls. Think what you want....we're being unfair....girls can do whatever boys can....we're being old fashioned....don't care....sorry, we stand by our feelings on this one. I'm watching Timmy try and grab her the way he would his male counterparts, around the chest from behind, grabbing a thigh to pull into position, needing to do a 'chest to chest' position to get the pin. These are just not things we feel are okay. Thank goodness, he pinned her....I say that because losing to a girl would only and insult to injury for a boy. When the match was over, Jason went over to talk to the coach. He explained to him that he tries to teach our boys to be respectful of girls, both by not 'wrestling' with them and also by not putting their hands on them in inappropriate ways. He said he teaches them to respect them with their actions and their hands.....thats hard to do in a sport like wrestling, can't get more hand to hand physical than that. The coach totally understood and said he would be sure to not team up the boys this way again. I gotta say, I often wonder about the parents that of the girl that don't seem to mind. If I had a daughter, especially one that was older like this girl was, do I really want all these boys manhandling her? I don't know...maybe it's just us. I have no idea if any other parent has said this same thing to their coach, but we feel comfortable with our position on it.