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Wrestling is a great sport and I have been involved since high school as a mat maid, my younger brother being a state qualifier in Iowa and my oldest wrestling. Garett is my baby and I was looking forward to his last two years.

It’s Friday night and I am in a Coralville, Iowa hotel room, a little weary from the four-hour drive from Chicago west on 88 and then even west-er on 80, past texting truck drivers and horizontal snow winds, miles of empty ice-dusted fields and about 1,000 signs for Subway. I just finished putting six turkey, cheese and spinach sandwiches I made this morning and about a gallon of Vitamin Water in the small humming refrigerator for Colin to eat tomorrow after the weigh-ins for the Iowa City West quad against Apple Valley and Marmion.

I know we are all supposed to be above this kind of thing. We are not gloat. We are in it for the challenge and the discipline of the sport. But oh my, it is one of the 10 best feelings in the world when your son has his hand raised in victory in a [...]

You know you’re a wrestling parent when: Beyonce sings about all the “single ladies” and you hear “all the single legs” and wonder why Beyonce has a song out about wrestling?…The smell of wrestling shoes brings back memories of matches rather than makes you sick to your stomach (ok, it might make you sick to your stomach as well)…You know more about rashes than your doctor.

In the stands every wrestling season since 2004 I have had plenty of anxiety attacks about what work I needed to do once I got home, what I needed to get accomplished for the house or for life, how to keep all the pins juggling in the air. But it was always worth it to go, spend most of the day in a gym wearing the orange and the blue just to see what splendor my sons could create. And it was splendid, even if the gym smelled bad and the other parents were sometimes hostile and some kids cried when they lost.

Coaches know what a 17 or 18-year-old wrestler cares about. They play to hopes and dreams of championships and gold medals. On one official visit the coaches were sure to take a route that passed the outdoor pool with hot tubs and a waterfall at the rec center. It was an especially warm weekend at the end of August and plenty of young women were working on their tans while wearing very little.

Nothing could be worse than sitting in the stands all day or even just an evening only to miss your son or daughter’s six minutes, right? Well I have discovered what could be worse – traveling overseas to watch your son wrestle and missing it!

At a fundraiser held in a bar near Midway Airport recently, wrestling moms, dads, aunts, friends and a three-time world champion shared pizza, meatballs and world-class encouragement from three-time world champion Lee Kemp for a quad squad of Illinois wrestlers headed to Szombathley, Hungary this week to compete in the World Championships. All of it to help four Illinois wrestlers; Matt Rundell, Darius Henry, Sammy Brooks and Zane Richards, with the costs of the overseas trip.

Now our state is sending four wrestlers to be part of U.S. team that will take on the world. Those wrestlers will compete in the 2011 FILA Cadet World Championships in Szombathely, Hungary August 23-29. To help defray that you are invited to the Illinois’ World Championship Party! on 8/13, 6-10 p.m., a benefit to raise money for Illinois wrestlers competing in Hungary.

Many of us who are members of the Huskies Wrestling Family have been watching Ellis Coleman for years, since he was an eighth grader member of the Little Huskies. And here he is, a 2009 graduate of Oak Park-River Forest High School, this week making this crazy flying squirrel Ellis move that landed him on the home page of Yahoo, ESPN and so many sites.