I GOT THIS cute little tidbit from the Port Townsend wrestling coach, Stephen Grimm, about one of his top wrestlers, Gabe Petrick at the Hammerhead Invite.
It came a little late to get it in this weekend’s write-up about the Hammerhead results, but it was such a cool story that I felt the need to get it out there.
It’s a perfect example of the stories behind the stories that I love.
Petrick is one of the best wrestlers for Port Townsend and he finished fourth at the Hammerhead Invite, which is a heck of an accomplishment. This is one of the biggest meets in the state (if not the biggest), with nearly 1,000 kids from all around the state competing.
However, there’s more to the story. According to coach Grimm, Petrick never actually lost a match. He came in fourth because he was forced to forfeit his quarterfinals match on Friday because he had a band concert to conduct.
“I’m unsure how good his band performance was, but there is no way it topped his wrestling,” Grimm said in an e-mail.
Now in the consolation bracket, Petrick went out and won three matches to make it to the consolation finals with a chance to finish third. But, he had to forfeit again for his next band performance.
According to coach Grimm: “He said he had an important band performance and I started to get into him about how important wrestling was. He said, ‘coach I have a plan to do both’ and then he described his plan to do both. If he could win all his matches … this meant winning every match and then forfeiting late in the day to go his band performance.
“I laughed and said, ‘Gabe this is Hammerhead, it’s not that easy to walk in win three in a row and then come back the next day and win three again. I could see he was determined, so I said, ‘OK, let’s see it.”
And as we all know, Petrick fulfilled his plan to perfection (actually winning five straight matches with a bye).
Petrick is clearly a well-rounded kid who not only is a high-caliber wrestler, he’s one of the best cross-country runners in the Olympic Peninsula (finishing 33rd at the state 1A cross-country meet in October.). Not only that, he is a band conductor.
Ignore the narrative
It also blows up a lot of false narratives about wrestlers. Grapplers in general are very well-rounded. They don’t just play football. Like Petrick, there’s several cross-country and track distance runners wrestling. There’s tennis and soccer players wrestling.
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for wrestlers. I started covering wrestling in Friday Harbor during the first year of the program and they felt that wrestling was getting ignored and I tried to take that to heart. For some, wrestling isn’t seen as being quite as “glamorous” as basketball, the only other winter sport (Except in Iowa, where wrestling is king), but it’s definitely got an extremely passionate fan base.
And wrestling takes incredibly hard work. I really think it might be the most exhausting, difficult sport out there on the high school level.
I’m going to make an honest confession here, and here’s hoping no wrestling coaches take offense. I personally have a very difficult time watching wrestling. It was because I was wrestling in P.E. in high school and I was having a lot of trouble with my neck at the time. I was eventually diagnosed with a slipped disc in my neck caused by a fractured vertebra that wasn’t diagnosed for years, probably from a car wreck when I was 13.
Anyway, my head got slammed awkwardly on the mat and it was like a cherry bomb went off in my neck. My face and the entire right side went completely dead and I couldn’t move for a good 15-20 minutes. Fortunately over the course of the day, I slowly regained the ability to move again, but it was pretty scary. The neck pain from that single incident lingered for months. I still had severe neck pain into my early 20s until months of chiropractic treatment more or less fixed it.
So, every time I watch a wrestling match, I literally just sit there cringing and flinching and fighting the urge to cover my eyes, because all I can do is remember that neck injury. Wrestling is a brutal sport, with lots of bad pulls and tears and even dislocations. I admire what the kids are willing to go through in order to do it.
And I admire the balance of a kid willing to come in fourth place because he’s more than a wrestler.
