High School Sports & Me, It Didn’t End Well
High School Nemesis
One snowy Friday, Coach W selected me to wrestle in my weight class against the Aberdeen team. Yes. Me. Wrestling. For some strange reason, I had decided to “go out” for wrestling; I was in tenth grade…so who knows what hormone triggered that insanity. The coach was…not his real name, Coach W.
Practices were a bitch; after exercise we wrestled our teammates and if Coach W didn’t think a wrestler was doing well, he ordered his two dogs to attack the poor performer. Yes, he brought his two German Shepherds into many of the practices, they were Max and Schnell. They never actually bit anyone, they would just race toward the victim, get close and snarl and growl. Scary. Scary. Scary.
Back to that Friday; during classes he told me to report to the stadium right after school to prepare for that evening’s match. And I did and they weighed me. I weighed several pounds above my weight class which was around 120 (I know, I know). Coach W looked at me and said “Time to sweat.” He put me into a rubber body suit and made me run up and down the steps of the stadium over and over again. No water. Another weigh in. Still over my weight. Run again. Weigh again. Run again. Weigh again. Ah…correct weight. Now I had to wait for the official weigh in. Did I mention I couldn’t drink anything? At last the formal weigh in, I was on my weight, I went off to drink a huge amount of water and rest, I was a wreck.
And then the match, my opponent was a kid named Sorenson (funny how I remember that). He was strong, bulky and mean looking. I was skinny, very skinny. And tired. I remember slippery, swirling arms and legs and sweat. Round 1. Round 2. I was amazed I’d survived that long. Round 3…he dozed off or something and I pinned him. Somehow my on fire muscles carried me back to the bench. Huron won the meet, I had contributed.
The next Monday, Coach W saw me in the hallway and said, “Good job last week. By the way, get your haircut or clean out your locker.” I was surprised, after all, I’d won my match and endured hours of grueling preparation. With the same long hair, and, I’d won. But, Coach W was a mean dragon of a man and not to be trifled with so I knew it wasn’t a joke.
I was playing in a band, The Bird Dogs, and long hair was part of the image. Of course, by today’s standards, my hair wasn’t long at all, it did go halfway down my ears and over my collar but, really, long hair. However, that was Huron in 1965. After school I went to the gym and cleaned out my locker. It wasn’t even a question what I should do. Wrestling wasn’t fun. Match prep wasn’t fun. And the match wasn’t fun. Rock and roll was fun. What had I been thinking?
The next day Coach W saw me coming out of study hall, grabbed me by the arm and said, “You haven’t cut your hair.”
“I cleaned out my locker,” I replied.
He drew back his arm, clenched his hand into a fist, and hit me hard, very hard, in the solar plexus. I fell like a rock to the floor and could not breathe. I could tell there was pain but my brain had no oxygen and that was the priority of the moment. I was curled in a fetal position, I couldn’t scream or cry or talk or curse…I had no breath. Classmates came to my side and held me while they yelled at me to breathe. I didn’t need encouragement. When I could breathe again, I felt the pain. The bruise lasted for days.
Time to head for my next class. No other teachers had seen the attack and it probably wouldn’t have made a difference if they had. I did not tell any adult. That’s what it was like in those days.