Dan’s blog

Owning the Mat Blog 6 Week 6 Here we go. Week six! It’s Monday, and we have 8 of our 10 wrestlers back for practice. For 90% of them, this is their first wrestling practice in 10 days. The boys looked like they were moving in slow motion today. The wrestlers were slow at everything […]

Owning the Mat Blog 5 Week 5   As a wrestling coach, I’ve never experienced a week like this before. Sunday, the day after Christmas, I took Dakota and the rest of my family, all seven of us, to Rec Park in Windham. There, the medical professionals gave us the PCR Covid test. I was

Owning the Mat Blog 4 Week 4   Mentally, Dakota seemed to be in a better place this week. Last Saturday was hard on him. But, I asked him how he was handling it, and he said he was fine. I watched him a little bit in practice Monday night, and he looked like the

Owning the Mat Blog 3 Week 3            I asked Dakota on Sunday morning how his elbow and arm were doing. Sometimes things hurt more the next day. To my delight, he said his arm was still feeling pretty good. However, he complained that the knee he had surgery on was

Owning the Mat Blog 2 Weeks 1 & 2 Wow! I can’t believe it’s here. It is the Monday after Thanksgiving in my son Dakota’s senior year of high school. And that means that it is the first day of wrestling season for Dakota. In addition, Dan Gable just called Dakota to wish him good

Blog 1 Preseason While in the pandemic lockdown, nobody was wrestling anywhere around us in Connecticut. Fortunately, though, we received a stimulus check that gave us the ability to buy a small 10X10 basement wrestling mat. It isn’t big enough for us to go full speed on. But it is big enough for us to

Blog 42 March 13, 2021  Well, wrestling season in Connecticut has come and gone, and there aren’t any post-season tournaments. The New England’s would have taken place last weekend. This is such an exciting tournament. I was hoping Dakota would have gotten to experience it this year, but it didn’t happen. There had been some

Blog 41 Junior Year, February 20th    This is the weekend of February 20th. It’s supposed to be the weekend of the Class L State Championships here in Connecticut. My son, Dakota, was supposed to have had a great season racking up many wins. I also pictured him placing in the States at 145 pounds

Blog 40 Junior Year, January 19th According to what we’ve been hearing from the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC), the governing body for secondary school athletics and the Department of Public Health (DPH), this Tuesday, January 19th, is supposed to be the start of winter sports. Unfortunately, the alternative spring football season will no longer

Blog 39 Junior Year Well, it’s Christmas again, and still no wrestling. Last year at this time, Dakota’s sophomore year, he shared with me how badly he just wanted his knee to be fixed up so he could be back on the mat. I shared with him that in this sport you never put off