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Michele Weldon | January 13, 2012
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.
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Michele Weldon | November 16, 2011
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.
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Michele Weldon | August 4, 2011
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.
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Michele Weldon | July 13, 2011
I understand how this brand of tragedy can happen and how quickly a momentary decision can change lives forever. It ended one life and changed another for the worse. The decision to fight. The decision to try to stop one.
Short of turning back time to the early childhoods of everyone involved in this one tragedy of the July 4th weekend and reprogramming each player in that event to avoid confrontation at all costs for a lifetime, I am not sure what we can possibly do to avert another similar outcome. And that notion terrifies me.
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Michele Weldon | July 5, 2011
See for yourself in this video why being on this team with this coach is an extraordinary experience for the young men on the team, including all three of my sons. Coach Powell talks about the coaches, the Oak Park-River Forest High School Huskies wrestling team, recent 2010 grad Charlie Johnson, and how any man can be extraordinary. Listen to senior Brian Toldeo talk about how wrestling changed his life. Watch Chris Ellis embrace Coach Powell. And maybe you can understand why it is about much more than wrestling.
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Michele Weldon | June 29, 2011
Speaking of off-season work ethic, Coach Mike Powell is in San Diego with some of the team training with the Vista wrestlers for a week of twice a day wrestling practices. Colin is there and working hard. The Vista wrestlers come to Oak Park in two weeks to train here.
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Michele Weldon | May 7, 2011
For a few years when the boys were small I went out to eat on Mother’s Day with them, paid the hefty brunch prices and basked in the boys’ adoration, even if they did keep asking the waiter to refill the bread basket so many times he was deeply annoyed. I felt as a single [...]
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Michele Weldon | February 13, 2011
I have taught all my boys to read, ride a bicycle, drive a car, heck, even eat with a fork, make a bed or a sandwich, fold clothes and study for tests, plus 10,000 other life skills they need to know to be able to get from Monday to Tuesday and from kindergarten through college. But it is Coach Powell they listen to. He’s tough when he needs to be. Kind when it counts. A mother is not a coach and maybe it would be weird if we both delivered the same messages the same way. But we both want the same results.
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Michele Weldon | January 28, 2011
From where I was now standing , I could see Colin unconscious, completely immobile, out. In my mind’s eye, in that future scary place I go to and have gone to since they were daredevil toddlers, I saw him paralyzed. Forever. I saw him in a wheelchair, 30 years old. I saw me pushing him, I saw his life changed from this very second. But it was just a bad thought. It did not come true.
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Michele Weldon | December 15, 2010
I believe happiness is a byproduct of being productive, contributing to the world, even if that contribution on that day can only be measured at your address. I believe happiness is the result, not the goal. It’s the afterglow of accomplishment, the joy of doing something well, whether that is being a good friend, parent, partner or colleague.
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