My story had to do with perseverance, something I’ve come across on more than one occasion while sight-seeing across Australia. My sports story dealt with my wrestling career, mainly those matches against Dan Gerritsen from Hopewell-Loudon. He was my opponent in my first official match and he tossed me around like a rag doll. I didn’t do better than being technical falled by Gerritsen anytime I faced him sophomore year, my first in wrestling. Junior year I fared a bit better being major decisioned (winning by between 8 and 15 points) early in the year and finally only being beat by a decision (fewer than 8 points) in our final bout of the season.
Senior year held my best matches against Gerritsen. After being beaten all of those times, probably about 10 altogether, we met in the consolation finals at the league championships. I won with a 12-6 decision to take 3rd place in the MAL. My career had just about come full circle. The next week I wrestled Dan Gerritsen for the final time. It was the consolation semifinals at the Sectional Tournament. Both of us were seniors, so we wanted nothing more than to reach that previously unattainable level of the postseason state tournament, Districts. I had a comfortable lead (5 points) fairly late in the match, until Gerritsen knocked out my post (my right arm, which was holding me up) – perfectly legally, I might add – and I hit my head, blacking me out temporarily. When I came to, I found myself on my back, nearly being pinned in my last match as a Calvert wrestler.
I got myself to turn over and looked to my coaches, Matt Coleman and Mike Steyer. I knew the match was getting close to the end and that Gerritsen’s (and the entire Chieftain team’s) weakness was riding on top. Matt and Mike were yelling, “You need one!!” meaning I had to earn an escape from Gerritsen. I was, to my amazement, fairly calm and found my way out of Gerritsen’s grip within the last few seconds of the match. I got my one.
When my head hit the mat, I basically forgot the score, which is why I got to my stomach and looked to my coaches. I thought my escape at the end of regulation earned my shot at overtime. At this point, I remember being hunched over, uncharacteristically pretty fatigued (I prided myself on being the most fit wrestler in every one of my matches), looking over my shoulder at the scoreboard on the wall. It read 9-8 in my favor. The escape point not only kept me IN the match, it actually WON the match, punching my ticket to the District Wrestling Tournament.
My coaches were ecstatic. I was very happy, though it was tough to show at that minute. I remember looking at Gerritsen, knowing that just over two years ago he had been more than able to flip and flop me to easy wins. I went something like 8-25 in my first year wrestling, but, with plenty of support, I never gave up. I just wanted to get better. I ended up taking fourth at Sectionals and winning one match at Districts – achieving the goal set out by the coaches and me and the beginning of the year.
Not everyone has great stories like that. But the difficulty of achieving that feat for me was what really made it great. I learned how to effectively and intelligently lose weight. I learned new moves, went to summer camps, increased my level of conditioning. I had to sit out some weeks due to injury to my knees which doctors told me probably came from being thrown around all the time. My junior year ended prematurely after I hyper-extended my elbow at the league tournament near the end of the season.
I contemplated quitting, but couldn’t take that threat seriously because I had been voted a captain junior year and knew that, if nothing else, other people really wanted me to be there. For the team to say that I should be their captain really humbled me and let me know that I might not be there for the wins, but maybe for something else. This is “sports” for the 99% of people on this earth who aren’t stud athletes. It’s working hard for some goal that, in itself, might only be really important for a year or two.
With age comes wisdom (supposedly) and I’ve found that I use a lot of those lessons I’ve learned from sports at other times in my life. For example, when vacationing at Rottnest Island off the west coast of Australia, Sara and I rented bikes for the day to ride around the island. We later found out that the island was pretty hilly and not so easy for bike riding. When I got to the bottom of a hill, I felt a NEED to get to the top while pedaling. There was something inside me that told me I couldn’t stop until I got to the top of each hill.
Whether it’s “perseverance” or “stubbornness” is just a technicality. There are certain times during this trip where I almost feel too stubborn to let someone else do something for me. I felt that way during the first big meal with our Asian housemates when we all went out to eat authentic Chinese food. I used chopsticks the whole time mainly because I wouldn’t let that be a barrier for me – if someone else could do it, I should be able to do the same. Sports taught me that if I couldn’t do something well enough, my spot was taken and my basic worth for the team was gone. That’s probably the harshest way to put it.
Wrestling has put its two cents into my life a few times, especially when it comes to food. It was the most grueling sport I’ve ever participated in and it took the most years out of my body. It also taught my body how to go a long time having barely anything on which to run. While my stamina now isn’t at the point it was during wrestling season, it’s still pretty common for me to wait until dinner time to have anything substantial to eat or drink.
Watch me walk around campus at Ohio University on any given day of the week – I probably don’t stop a whole lot. I like to block classes and work together so I can stay on the go and not have to worry about food – though I have been better in recent years at drinking a full bottle of water over the course of a one-hour class (for better general health).
The best part about sports is that any participant can take these lessons away, regardless of which sport it is or age at the time of participation. All it takes is having an athlete who is willing to give her or her right arm to get something done – a willingness to start, dedication towards a final goal and perseverance to connect those two points (amongst many other great things that come out of sports, including the teamwork aspect, etc.).
Participating in sports has also taught me to be pretty resilient, keeping a strong mind no matter what the environment produces to make me consider otherwise. Imagine the concentration necessary of a college basketball player trying to make a free throw during a game while visiting Cameron Indoor. Now imagine that same person trying to concentrate on some task in an office where the boss simply walks in and says, “Hey, this needs to be done today.”
Also during the first meal with the housemates (yes, I learned a lot during that one little trip) I asked the landlady, Susie, what she thought about my chances at getting a job. The conversation progressed to my asking, “How many students get jobs usually??” Susie responded by saying, “It’ll be easier with people like [your housemates] not taking the jobs.”
Daniel is one of the housemates studying psychology at UniSA. When Susie said this, his only response was, “I can’t help it that I’m rich.” That really rubbed me the wrong way and made me feel like I was just some chump. But just a week ago I sat at the brunch table talking with Daniel and Susie (both from Malaysia) about things that are different in various countries. After I had tried my best at explaining baseball to Daniel (he followed really well until I had to try and explain stolen bases), he and Susie went on to give the Cliff Notes version on how the government in Malaysia worked.
I heard stories on how the Muslim regime basically runs the show, “once a Muslim, always a Muslim” and about how torture is used in some instances. Once this part was out there, it made me think back to the “I’m rich” comment with a little less anger. In the U.S. there is the idea of the “American Dream” where anyone can work really hard to build up cash supplies and find true happiness and success. Hearing about how Malaysia worked made me very happy to be an American, living in a country that generally won’t take you off and torture you; a place that holds the unofficial separation of church and state.
Comparing the U.S. to some other places, I find that it would be my choice to live. I’ve lived there the longest and that might be a lot of the reason I choose the U.S., but I feel that there are a lot of things going for good ol’ America despite all the negatives people bring up about political actions (or inactions) in place.
Sara and I just got finished with a trip to Hobart, Tasmania, which, to my surprise, is just another state of Australia. For some reason I thought it might be its own country, but I guess that’s just New Zealand. The Hobart trip was one of the best yet as far as activities go. I really like to hear about and see things that go in two categories – history and natural phenomena. We got a good dose of both in the same day during our trip to Port Arthur, a 19th century convict colony about an hour-and-a-half away from Hobart.
Along the way, we got to see “The Tesselated Pavement.” Because the east coast of Tasmania is located along a fault line, this piece of nature created itself without the assistance of civilization’s hands (whether intentional or unintentional). Water mixed its way into cracks in the stone and then made larger crevices when mixed with the shaking ground. I found it pretty cool anyway.
After that stop, we continued on to Port Arthur, officially Tasmania’s top tourist attraction. Hearing the history of Australia’s largest penal colony was pretty interesting as that topic is considered one of Aussie history’s most prominent. One such story involved the buildings that housed the convicts when the site first opened in 1833. We were told that if the structures were used to house army soldiers today, they would provide living space for between 40 and 60 men. Back at the time of establishment, however, these structures had earthen floors, no plumbing (so waste buckets were a must) and housed over 1,000 convicts!! Talk about horrible conditions. Eventually an old flour mill and kitchen on the settlement was converted to a new penitentiary (seen below), which gave the convicts better living arrangements.
When the convicts misbehaved, they could receive between 25 and 100 lashes to their backs. At first some of them were so damaged by these lashings that they found pass out and had to be revived in a bath filled with freezing cold saltwater. Eventually the prisoners became almost immune to the punishment and the physical injuries didn’t stop them from continuing to misbehave.
This was when the prison officials decided to implement mental punishment, building a completely separate place to house those offenders deemed “worthy” of a new wave of injury. The cells were extremely small and were assigned to individual convicts. All that was in the cells was a small stool and table on which to eat, one shelf on the wall to hold the Bible and possibly one personal belonging and the convict’s bedding. There was nothing but natural lighting, either. The convicts weren’t allowed to see anyone other than an occasional officer who took them out to dump their waste bucket or take them out to the exercise yard, where the convicts spent AT MOST one hour (on the luckiest of days).
If the convicts acted up while already in this separate prison, they were sentenced to do time in the building’s solitary confinement chamber. It was separated from the rest of the building by four doors that were each a meter thick, with no two doors open at the same time. The convict then had to stay in absolute darkness and silence for up to weeks. They had to receive a certain amount of rations (consisting of simple bread and water) for each 36 hour period they were in there, but sometimes the guards would mess with the confined prisoner’s mind by giving them two rations fairly close together in time.
As long as the prisoner received the allotted amount during each 36-hour period, it was still legal. So, for example, a prisoner might go 35 hours without food before receiving that period’s rations. The guards might then bring the next ration within an hour – messing with the convict’s biological clock and forcing the convict to sit with the ration in the cell for a long period of time OR eating them both fairly quickly, then not getting anything else for possibly 3 days’ time. Also, since the prisoner’s in that cell were in complete darkness, often when they retreated back to the normal cells, the natural sunlight was too bright and immediately blinded them. Now THAT is what I consider doing the time. I found these various stories fascinating.
Saturday in Hobart held adventures of outdoor activities. We began the morning by kayaking in the bays and river surrounding Hobart, hearing some history of the harbor and wildlife. We didn’t tip the boat, which was good, but somehow I ended up with the whole back side of my jeans being soaked in water. Sara was completely dry. Go figure.
After a quick change into sweatpants (my only pair of pants remaining), we got on a bus to ride a little ways up Mount Wellington. With our guide and another pair of hikers, we then set off to trek our way up the mountain. Our guide, Jeff, was pretty funny and knew a lot about the natural plants and animals that inhabit the mountain, so we got more little tidbits of information about the area. The views overlooking Hobart from the mountainside are spectacular and I recommend you taking a look through my facebook album “Hobart #2” if you haven’t already. The picture below is shot from a small landing where we stopped to eat lunch (which was delicious, I might add).
At the top it was really freezing and snowy. People in Hobart really never get to see snow unless they get to the top of Mount Wellington, so they were all going crazy. Apparently it’s a tradition to build a snowman on the hood of your car (here they’re called, “bonnets” haha) and try to drive all the way back to your house without losing it, which sounds like a hilarious and challenging thing to try and do, considering the road going from the top of the mountain to the bottom is ridiculously curvy.
Our flight made it back to Adelaide safe and sound on Sunday, the day of my birthday. I had forgot it was August 12 until Sara randomly said, “Hey, happy birthday,” to me that morning at the bus stop. The only birthday I’ve really celebrated in the past how many years was last year’s 21st in Cincinnati (for obvious reasons). Luke Florence put it best when he recently told me, “It's official, we are getting old. 21 was cool and fun, but now, it's just overkill.” I didn’t really celebrate much, though the housemates surprised me by getting a thick chocolate cake and singing for me. Sara and I figured out that we told them our birthdays in casual conversation during one of the first days we were here and they remembered it. That fact will probably be included in one of my future blog posts having to deal with “things that are universal no matter who you are or where you’re from.”
I spent the latter part of my birthday doing laundry, cleaning the room and going to church. It may have been relatively uneventful, but maybe I’ll just belatedly celebrate this weekend. But Saturday can’t be too rough considering I’ll be spending Sunday on the beach at Glenelg for “Learn to Surf” day with the Student Exchange Society.
That’s it for now. Love you all in the states, check back soon to hear stories from the above two events, as they will likely be enough to fill an entire blog post.
From the other side of the globe, I’m Kevin Hunt.
If you want to see me soon, start digging.
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