Chili Pins Aylen

So if you were wondering what a pin looks like... and for those keeping score... he has 3 pins in his last 3 matches... the time of all three matches combined equal less than 1 minute... nice quick pins!!(ps a normal match is 3-one & a half minute rounds)

ACDC

So I bet some of you are wondering why in the world I would choose ACDC as the music on my little family oriented blog, but then again maybe you they are more of you who aren't even a little surprised! Well actually I had a plan, shocking I know. This is what we call 'Tournament Season.' Wrestling is always pretty busy but January is always a little more special. This is the month when we go to sub-division, if we make the top four, we go on to division, and then again the top four go on to the big finale league. Our team has traditionally been introduced and made their big entrance onto the mat with the big loud manly song "Thunderstruck." So basically I am trying to help out our teams luck by getting the song stuck in everyone's head!!! Oh, and in case anyone was curious Chili, Giuseppe, and Mason are all going on to the League Tourney this year... Wish us luck!!!

Chili -vs- Stahl

Chili's Jr. High team lost the dual meet but Chili as you can see didn't have any trouble at all against their 110lb Varsity wrestler : )

Giuseppe Takes 1st!!!

Giuseppe has been working hard now for 4 years in the sport of wrestling and all the while his brothers have been having all the success. Giuseppe has been working just as hard as them but for some reason has just not quite ever taken first. Many second place medals and some thirds but no first places..... until now.... finally all the hard work has payed off at least for now. He has taken home his first official 1st place medal and poster!!! We are so very proud of him over the last couple weeks. He has not only done great in wrestling but also in the classroom. Giuseppe is the first of our boys to bring home a report card with all 4's (the equivalent of straight A's for the non-Washington readers) and then as if that weren't enough he was the only one in his challenge class(gifted program once a week) to get all 4's on that report card as well. I guess this is just his month!!! We love you Beppe!!

Mr. and Mrs. Hammond

Gage's First Wrestling Medal

So this past weekend the Holiday Tournament. Well here is how it went, Giuseppe and Mason placed 4th and both received medals. They both did their best. Now Gage was in a slightly different part of the tournament. While Giuseppe and Mason were in a regular 8 man bracket style tournament, Gage was part of what is called a Round Robin where they pair up 4 kids of similar age, weight, and ability and they wrestle each kid once. Gage has done this a couple times now and for some reason he seems to get the similar weight part but almost never ability and age. I suspect it is because since his big brothers have been around for a while they assume that since Gage has the same last name he must be better than average. Well as it turns out he's not. He is just quite simply a 5 year old with a couple of months experience. So he always is paired with kids with a couple of years experience. So he hasn't even scored a point all season. So we were a little bit bummed when we found out that Gage was wrestling 7 year olds. But Gage always seems to have fun so we drove on as usual. He ended up losing all of his matches but he felt like he was king of the world. In his 2nd match he scored 2 points, his first points ever, then he got pinned. For his third match I think he remembered how much fun scoring was so he decided to do it some more. He scored 8 points and almost pinned the other kid. In the end the other boy won by just a couple of points. His coaches were so proud of him that they gave him a special star patch. One of Chili's friends saw how excited Gage was and even bought him a shirt. So yeah... all the kids at the tournament received a medal and really Gage got 4th out of 4... but isn't it the little victories that count?!!! GO GAGER!!