`I could not imagine being prepared for life without them'
Years ago, I remember reading an interview with Oklahoma State wrestling coach John Smith. Having learned to wrestle while growing up in the MidDel School System, Smith noted if you went to school in Midwest City or Del City during the 1960s, '70s or '80s, at some point you went out for wrestling. I was one of those many kids John Smith was referring to.
I started wrestling while in third grade at Ridgecrest Elementary in Midwest City. I remember the day my dad bought me some tennis shoes and met me after school. We walked down to the gym. Boys were already running around the mat so I jumped in and so it began.
My friends and I followed the wrestlers at OU and OSU. Like the New York Yankees in baseball, we knew the names of each wrestler on OU and OSU's teams. Indeed, one of my big thrills many years later in college was meeting former OSU national champion Fred Fozzard in Stillwater and losing to him in a game of pool.
My senior year in high school I finally made the varsity. Although we had some of the top wrestlers in the state on that squad, coach Jim Kinyon had a lot of us wrestling above our ability because of his belief in us. Besides being on a state championship team, the other big thrill came for me at the end of the season when I finally got a Midwest City High School letter jacket. I was so proud of mine I wore it well into May that year, to heck with the heat.
I did just well enough my senior to be offered a scholarship to the new junior college in town, Oscar Rose Junior College. The coach, Virgil Milliron, was an Oklahoma legend. At John Marshall High School, he had coached two future Olympians Wayne Wells and Wayne Baughman.
In 1996, a bunch of his old wrestlers put on a banquet at Rose State College to honor Coach Milliron. Wells, the Olympic gold medalist, described tearfully the many ways Coach Milliron had influenced him. Most people in the room had tears in their eyes after that speech.
In 2012, Choctaw Mayor Randy Ross, a former high school teammate at Midwest City, organized a get-together at his home in Choctaw. He invited our old wrestling coach, Jim Kinyon, to come from Colorado where Jim was then living. When I arrived, the house was full of ex-wrestlers. We were all there to thank Coach Kinyon. He had helped shape us with skills we would use all our lives that we learned from wrestling.
In the end, why do I love sports? Well, I could not imagine being prepared for life without them.