About Wrestling Mom

I am a journalist, author, educator and mother of three. And in season I am in the stands dressed in the school colors screaming my sons' names. I shoot video of Colin and order all the snapshots on Kodak.com taken by other parents capturing the moves I missed on the mat.

I have spent nearly a decade as a wrestling mom, and have at least two more seasons to go. During my oldest son, Weldon’s, last high school varsity wrestling season in 2007, he placed fourth at the Illinois state championship while I recovered from breast cancer. Two years later, my middle son, Brendan, won the Junior Varsity championship for 171 pounds. My youngest son Colin wrestled varsity as a sophomore at 119 pounds for the team that won the Illinois team title in 2009.

This website is built around a forthcoming  book about community and family surrounding a sport that is widely misunderstood. Tell someone your son wrestles and he or she either understands instantly or equates it with the platinum-blond barbarism of the WWF. Others think all the boys have eating disorders. Many say it is just plain gross.

But I know better. For my boys, wrestling is more to them than practices and matches, singlets and warm-up suits. It is a way for my sons to form an identity, to become better people, to channel their emotions. It gave them another family. It gave them good men to imitate in the coaches and strong friends to lean on in victories as well as challenges. Wrestling filled their lives with something good, something they achieved, something they were proud of, something they owned, even if what they owned at times were losses. And there through all of it, for all of them, was and is an amazing coach, Mike Powell.

I won’t brag on this site about their wrestling, because my sons beg me not to, but I will tell the truth about what wrestling has done for my sons, and how it has shaped their lives, and mine. I wouldn’t dream of missing a match to say, go to the movies, take a nap or meet a friend for lunch. I always figured I would not be proud of the epitaph, “She always had a recent pedicure.” So I go and sit in the stands. And scream. I have learned what it means to be a better parent. I have learned what it means to go all out "whistle to whistle."

This site is about a complicated life, the kind so many of us lead. About trying to balance caring for my sons and supporting my own ambition. It is about trying to move ahead with challenging work as a tenure-track assistant professor at Northwestern University and have a life outside of all of it that makes me feel full. Like all of us, I am trying to manage it all, do it all and still laugh at the end of the day.
I welcome your advice, your stories and your support, as I lend mine to you. We all have a lot to wrestle in our lives; we just hope most days we don't get pinned.