Dan’s blog – Page 57 – GrandDaddysSecrets

HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 36)

Blog 36 Week 11 Regular Sophomore Season Well, it’s getting into the second week of February, and wrestling season is winding down. Monday and Tuesday’s practices were pretty typical. The wrestlers did a bunch of spinning, some drilling, some stretching, and then some live wrestling. Then they did some more spinning followed by sprints to […]

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 35)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Blog 35 Week 10 of Regular Sophomore Season I had to record a couple of episodes for my weekly Mindalia TV shows tonight, so I missed practice. I’m not liking this missing a practice thing much, but it is what it is, I guess. Sometimes as an adult, duty calls. When I first talked about

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 34)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Blog 34 Week 9 of Regular Sophomore Season It’s Monday again. And guess what? I missed wrestling practice today. Near the end of my workday of teaching, I got a call from my wife. She and my daughter were at an urgent care center and that they were being sent to the Connecticut Children’s Hospital

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 33)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Blog 33 Week 8 of Regular Sophomore Season This week started a bit different. Monday is Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, so we don’t have any school today. But, what we do have is a 6:45 A.M. bus to a jayvee wrestling tournament back in Griswold. It’s the same place we were yesterday for the

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 32)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Blog 32 Week 7 of Regular Sophomore Season Here we are in week 7 of the wrestling season, and Dakota still hasn’t wrestled a single day yet. I came out of a 15- year retirement from coaching to help coach him and his team, and I still haven’t had a chance to coach him

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 31)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Blog 31 Week 6 of Regular Sophomore Season Week six is here, and the struggle for Dakota’s knee to heal in time continues. We’re hearing a lot of different things from a lot of different people about what to expect for his recovery time and whether or not he’ll be able to wrestle in the

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 30)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Week 5 of Regular Sophomore Season It’s still the holiday vacation, but wrestlers don’t really get this time off. Some people travel during the holidays. The only traveling they usually do is back and forth to a bunch of wrestling practices and a few tournaments. Sure some wrestlers are forced or even tricked by their

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 29)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Week 4 of Regular Sophomore Season Monday, Dakota and I drive to practice together due to it being vacation week from school. I finally got there on time because I didn’t have to do the hour drive to get there from work first. On the way to practice, Dakota shared with me again how bad

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 28)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Week 3 of Regular Sophomore Season Well, here we are in week three of Dakota’s sophomore wrestling season of high school, and it has been riddled with ups and downs already. One of the cool things about this wrestling season so far is that Tony, the front door security guy, no longer asks me to

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HITTING THE MAT: The Making of A State Champ or At Least A Good Man! (Blog 27)

Dan's blog / danblanchard

Off-Season Wrestling and Weeks 1 and 2 of Regular Sophomore Season Wow! I can’t believe we’re back again on the mat for another high school wrestling season. It was one heck of an off-season of wrestling for Dakota. He was invited to wrestle in the Virginia Beach High School Nationals at the freshmen level for

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