Wrestling with Sports Prowess
Not Sooner forgotten...
Wrestling poster given away at basketball game
Leaving LNC after Wednesday's men's game, I noticed a stack of apparently unwanted posters. I grabbed one, thinking it was of the basketball team. At home I saw it actually was of the Sooner wrestlers, and I felt a stab of pain mentally. The unwanted posters to me showed a lack of respect for the real athletes. Yes, you read that right.
Back when athletes walked through the stadium to get to class, I was interviewing an all-american gridder in the empty stands when he paused the session and called my attention to the concourse below us. Five football players walked one direction as two wrestlers approached. "Watch who gives way as they pass," he said. The 5 gridders parted to let the wrestlers continue through them without breaking stride. When I looked at him in surprise, he added, "We know who the real athletes are."
That got me curious. I already was shell shocked about Sooner wrestling from my time as a student assistant in Sports Information. Here's a hot take to some: Bedlam began on wrestling mats, not gridirons.
Matches were held in a packed and positively rocking Field House. The noise of my first Bedlam was the LOUDEST of ANY sports event I covered in my 20 year career. They had to throw a rolled trowel onto the wrestlers to signal the end of periods because the arena's horn couldn't be heard over the din. And the noise level was much the same for any match.
Troy Mantanona after a pin
My job then was to ask defeated wrestlers what hold just got them pinned moments before, and I would have to keep asking the embarrassed or angry guy to repeat his answer because I couldn't hear. They'd practically have to spit it in my ear.
So, remembering that, I got permission from OU coach Stan Able to watch a typical practice session. The Sooners toiled long and hard until exhausted. I thought they were done, and started to get up as they picked themselves off the mat -- only to go at it again. And again. And again. And again. I silently yearned for them to quit because I was exhausted just watching.
I'm not going into what all they do to pull weight and grueling things like that. I just want to salute these unheralded matmen as true Sooner athletes.
OU's "Tarzan" Wayne Wells
I confess I haven't been to a match since "Tarzan" Wayne Wells of the '60s, but Lord willing I'll be at the Feb. 8 match at McCasland, back where the Senior Sooner first began. It'll be a homecoming of sorts for me. Join me if your ears can stand it.
