Winston Churchill once said “solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.” Wrestling is a solitary sport. Not just an individual sport, but a solitary one. If you cannot stand to be alone, then it is my assertion, that it will be difficult for you to be a solid wrestler. I will also grant that you cannot become a great wrestler strictly on your own. You need great workout partners, coaches, parents, and teammates to provide for you, and of course, you need friends you are close with who can help you forget about wrestling for a while, because no man should have a one track mind focused solely on success in wrestling. That’s no way to enjoy life.
But success in life (as well as in wrestling) requires one to be comfortable with solitude. Deciding to eat right, workout enough, train hard, and live properly, those are all decisions made on your own, just as deciding to work as hard as you possibly can to become successful in your profession is a choice made on your own. You cannot rely on others for self-discipline, so you must have a great relationship with yourself. Think about it, that conversation going on in between your ears - is it a positive or a negative one? That voice you hear in your head, does it respect you? Does it admire you? Does it root for you? Does it encourage you? Does it even want to speak to you anymore? Because if it doesn’t you may want to begin thinking about why you can’t even get along with yourself. As Tennessee Williams said, “we’re all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.” It’s up to you whether or not that’s such a bad thing.
Solitude shouldn’t be uncomfortable for a wrestler. If it teaches anything at all, wrestling should teach you mental toughness and the basics of how to intrinsically motivate yourself. There’s a reason why writers like Steve Cooper, a contributor to Forbes Magazine write articles with titles like “Why Wrestler’s Make the Best Employees.” It’s because to be successful in wrestling, athletes must know how to discipline themselves, how to push themselves, and how to handle success and failure themselves. In life, as in wrestling, no one out there is willing to do those things for you, so you better start figuring out how to do it on your own.
I hope that my wrestlers are capable of independently functioning once they’ve moved on with the sport. I hope that wrestling has made them stronger students, stronger job candidates, and stronger men. It’s these hopes that disturb my solitude at times, but it’s also these worries that motivate me to be a teacher, to be a coach, and to try and be a better person. And I think wrestling has helped me be better at solitude, and be better at life.
In the end, it’s my hope that by the time I finish my coaching career, I will have created some strong, solitary trees, some people who are comfortable with who they are, with the effort they made and continue to make in life, and with the men they’ve become.
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