New champions, old champions and losses

A coach once told me that a bad loss is sometimes the best thing for a team. It lets you know that there are still things to work on and that it exposes our weaknesses.

That statement can be applied to our everyday life as well. Sometimes we are going through our delicately balanced life, doing all the things we want to and are required to do; everything is going along just peachy when something happens that disrupts everything. It could be a major life event or a small road bump, but we take notice and realize things were not as good as we thought and things may never be the same again. With all that said, we must, or should, learn from it and rise from the ashes of the seeming ruin of our life and carry on.

One case in point is Lake Roosevelt High School’s newest State Wrestling Champ, Octavio Alejandre. To be totally honest, and not put myself in a Brian Williams kind of position, I do not know all the facts about this young man. I have only heard bits and pieces of his story and seen his desire to succeed on occasions, myself.

What I do know is that this big guy (I call him the Anvil) has put in a lot of work in over the years to put himself in this position, and he took the bull by the horns and brought home the gold. He has not only won on the mat either, he is now an honor student as well. He pretty much turned every aspect of his life around and became what God and he himself wanted to be — a champion.

It did not happen overnight, either. Hours in the gym, major focus on work and respecting himself and others over a four-year period has brought this young man to this point. The best part is he is not done. A state title in track and field looms in the short distance or the long distance of throwing events. Graduation is also just down the road and then college. Big time has arrived for the bigger-than-life young man, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. Good job, Anvil.

One more thing to add to the newest champ’s story. It is the story of the many men that put in time with Mr. Alejandre on the mat. Practice time. It is hard for a heavy weight wrestler of the Anvil’s caliber to find a partner to spar with. So over the years, many faces lined up across the mat from him, including past champions and first-time wrestlers and a dummy that lost body parts in the process. Those folks that took the beatings, bruises and slams from him over the course of the year also own a piece of this championship. The Anvil would be the first to say thank you to them as well as to a great coaching staff that helped mold this man and many others over the years into champions on the mat and off.

But this whole thing is not about sports. We have losses in life, as wel,l that rock us into a shivering pile of flesh from which we sometimes think we cannot recover. They can come in the form of sickness, deaths or financial hardships, along with many other things. Kids these days seem to be dealing with more and more adult situations and barely holding on to life by a thread, and eventually sometimes that thread is cut. The simple “Good Morning” or fist bump can be the only positive thing they receive in a day and we, as the positive role models in their lives, whether we want to be or not, can be the life rope thrown. It can make the difference between a champion being crowned and a kid just surviving. The loss can be a springboard or wakeup call to strive for the next level. One key factor is that sometimes we just need a little support. Someone to get on the mat with us, or root for us from the sidelines or require us to lift just a little more weight today. A fist bump, a “hello” or even just a smile can strengthen the thread to unbreakable.