Hard work, focus and dedication.
These are the three phrases heard most often from athletes, parents and coaches in any sport. The three keys that help the athletes achieve their dreams.
These are also the keys for the Oregon wrestling squad. When the Ducks practice, they work on technique, position and footwork. They prepare not just physically, but mentally.
These athletes have to be dedicated for the amount of hard work and focus the sport of wrestling takes.
Especially when wrestling in front of a crowd.
Take, for example, the Jan. 17 match, which featured the Ducks in a battle with California-Davis at McArthur Court. One UC Davis fan had a different cheer for every wrestler on the Aggies’ squad, which he would shout through a plastic megaphone from the front row.
The “Let’s go to Sam’s Club” — one of the Aggies was named Sams — and “looks like someone forgot to eat their quackers for breakfast” cheers were enough to get on the nerves of fans on the other side of the court.
How do the wrestlers handle it?
They have to stay focused. That’s the name of the game in wrestling.
Hard work is shown in every meet when the wrestlers make weight, score a takedown or win their match.
It takes long hours in the gym and an eye always on their plate for wrestlers to make weight every match. Those ten weight classes? The wrestler has to meet the weight — he can’t be a single pound over.
In the training room, the Ducks work on the whole picture by working on the little things. Moving a foot two inches one way, keeping the elbows in and making sure to always know where the out-of-bounds line is keeps the coaches happy and the wrestlers in form.
On the mat during a meet, wrestlers focus on the moment — the next takedown, the time left in the period, their opponent’s next step. Teammates and coaches yell from the bench. These are the only voices they can’t tune out — ignoring the coach isn’t allowed.
Focus is hardly its own concept. Hard work and dedication are incomplete without focus.
Dedication is not something that can be measured. Unlike hard work, which can be spotted through the little things a wrestler improves on over the course of a day or a season, dedication is the key to the big picture.
The dedicated wrestlers, those who spend as much time in the gym or mentally preparing for their next match as they spend working on homework, are the mark of a squad that wants to win. Homework doesn’t suffer, it is completed, but wrestling isn’t a hobby, it’s a way of life.
Off the mat, the men on the wrestling squad are the same as you and I. They eat at the same places, they go to the same school and they take the same classes.
They even cheer for the same football and basketball teams.
The outstanding thing about the members of the wrestling squad is the hard work, focus and dedication they devote to a sport where they spend so much time rolling around on the ground.
Even the mats must hurt once in a while.
The wrestlers don’t show it though. They roll and tumble and wrestle the next match. They move on to the next opponent, the next season, the next squad they compete with.
But as long as the men of the wrestling squad are still wrestling, they always have the three most important things — hard work, focus and dedication.