By Ted Witulski

How can you make it to the top, if you don’t know where the top is?

When young kids start wrestling many soon find that the great combat sport is something for which they are made. Unlike football, where you have to wait your turn and share playing time with your teammates, wrestling gives you the chance to get in and mix it up right from the start.

It’s rough. It’s tough. And it’s fun.

Once kids get to know the sport they have a choice to make. "Do I want to wrestle just because it’s fun? Or, do I want to wrestle and see where my skills take me?

Now take the first question, do I want to wrestle just because it’s fun? For a time, most wrestlers will be satisfied with answering yes. Wrestlers get on the mat they progress from single legs and drop steps to back steps and back arches. The myriad of wrestling techniques are challenging and the overall conditioning and strength training is unsurpassed.

Yes, there is nothing wrong with wrestling just for fun, but as kids wrestle longer and longer they will soon find that their skills are outpacing the local competition. It’s hard to believe, but many a good wrestler has missed the opportunity to become great because the challenge of the sport disappeared. In other words, after kicking tail and being king of the hill locally, they got bored and moved on to other pursuits.

Now, let’s take the second question, do I want to wrestle and see where my skills take me? The nice thing about the second questions is that you don’t have to stop enjoying the sport, when you take the steps to see where wrestling can take you. A young lady named Tela O’Donnell comes to mind. Tela O’Donnell loves the sport of wrestling. She grew up in Homer, Alaska and actually had to speak in front of the local school board before she was allowed to wrestle on her local "boys" only wrestling team.

Because Tela loved the sport she kept training and more and more doors opened up to her. She went to college to wrestle, and then became a resident at the Olympic

Training Center in Colorado Springs. All the while she always had a smile on her face. Once when she was asked what are you thinking about before a big match and the bright-eyed impish girl with an easy smile said, "I go into every match wanting to have fun."

As Tela continually improved more and more opportunities for her opened up. She’s traveled the world competing for Team USA. Sweden, Greece, and France are just a few places the young girl from Alaska has seen. Having fun is one part of the sport, but seeing the path that leads to the top of the mountain is just as important.

Tela O’Donnell is now one of four American women that will represent the United States in the 2004 Olympics; the first time women get to wrestle in the near-eternal sporting competition. She loved the sport. Saw the top of the mountain, and then set out on the path, seeing where her skills would take her.

It is a great story, but what more wrestlers need to do is apply it to their own wrestling careers.

Are you having fun in the sport of wrestling? If you do it right the answer would most emphatically be yes. So, from there you need to see the top of the mountain. Very often, minimal thinkers pick out the small hill and climb it claiming that they summated Everest. Wrestling wasn’t made for this timid thinking.

Everyone knows the top of amateur athletics is World and Olympic competition. That’s how great the journey is, how high the mountain. So, as a young wrestler in your local county or region it would be easy to aim towards a state title, but why make that your end goal? Regionally and nationally, young men and women compete at higher levels.

As a senior in high school Sam Hazwinkel, now an All-American for the University of Oklahoma, qualified for and wrestled in the World Team Trials. He truly has seen the top of the mountain, and foregoing minimalist thinking, he set out on that path.

On the women’s side, a young lady named Caitlyn Chase of Michigan qualified for the Olympic Team Trials in Indianapolis this year. Though she will be just a junior in high school she has already set out on a path of higher achievement. She openly speaks of her dream of being an Olympian for the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing. This summer in Fargo she took another step toward that goal by winning a Freestyle National Title against the best high school girls in the country.

Jamill Kelly, America’s Olympian at 66 kgs in freestyle, didn’t start wrestling till the 9^{th grade after he was cut from the basketball team. He never won a state title placing only 4th his senior year, but he loved the sport and kept wrestling. He wrestled in a Junior-College and still loving the sport decided to climb even higher by wrestling for one of the top division-one programs in the country, Oklahoma State. He never became a National Champion, not even an All-American. Yet, he still loved wrestling and so he kept competing. Jamill Kelly grabbed hold of a higher vision and kept improving and in 2003 and 2004 he was crowned the best wrestler in his weight class, earning him the right to represent the United States in the Olympic games.}

Fun is inherent in the great sport of wrestling, but so is the constant challenge and ever-expanding opportunities of which a competitor can take advantage. The top of the mountain, being the best in the world, is afforded to those that set out on the path and see how far their skills and desires take them. Remember the first steps in a long journey are the most important ones.