“What Just Happened?” I'm Thinking with Horror. I Can Hear My Coaches
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Prologue “What just happened?” I’m thinking with horror. I can hear my coaches shouting, the sound of their voices overpowered by the sound of my labored breathing. “Did I just blow it?” I can’t remember anything that happened since my last peek at the scoreboard, which indicated that I was ahead 4-2 with thirty-nine seconds left in the match. Now I’m on my back looking at the ceiling lights, and the referee is counting back points. I realize with dread that my plan of stalling out the last half-minute has failed. I fight with all the strength I can muster, and somehow manage to flip onto my stomach. I look at the scoreboard again and see that the score is tied. There are now eleven seconds left in regulation time. A lot has happened in twenty-eight seconds. Unless something changes, this match is heading to overtime. I’m gripped with an intense fear because I am completely spent. My panic is compounded by a feeling that my opponent getting stronger and more confident even as I wither. I know he’s relishing the thought of wrestling into overtime just as I’m cowering from it. The seconds seem like years. Now there are just eight seconds left in regulation time. Although I’m no longer on my back, I’m still wrapped up tightly in my opponent’s cradle. I know there is no way I can end the match by scoring the tie-breaking points myself. His hold is too tight and the time remaining is too short, even if I somehow find the resolve to try. Another second ticks by. Soon it will be too late to avoid overtime. But I can’t go on. I think of all the hard work and sacrifices I’ve made over the past three years to get to this point. I have an opportunity to go further than anybody thought I could, especially my own teammates. If I lose this match, nobody will ever remember that I’d come within thirty-nine seconds of making it to the state tournament. But none of that matters. I just can’t go on. I thought I had what it takes but now I realize I don’t. There is only one alternative to overtime. It’s unthinkable, but in my state of despair the unthinkable has become reasonable. I look at the clock again and see that there are now only seven seconds remaining. It has to be now, or time will run out with no change in scoring, sending the match into overtime. I know I can’t score, and the only way my opponent can score to break the tie is to put me on my back again. But it has to be now. Chapter 1 -- Idea “I wonder if I could get back into high school and wrestle again,” I remarked. After I said it I watched Brad’s face closely. Brad had been my best friend for years. He was nineteen years old already; I would turn nineteen in September. We had met in elementary school and stayed close through high school. After graduation he enrolled at East Carolina University. I stayed closer to home at North Carolina State University, where I had just completed my freshman year. I had planned the seemingly off-the-cuff remark to Brad for weeks. It was designed to sound like it was made in jest, but I was quite serious. Ever since the idea had dawned on me I’ve been looking for just the right opportunity to say it out loud. Brad was my best friend but I didn’t know how he would feel about it, so I sent it up as a trial balloon. The idea first came to me during the winter. I was watching a local high school match in Raleigh. Neither of the teams was very talented and the bigger guys seemed to be particularly bad on both sides. I compared my ability to theirs, and decided that I could probably beat every wrestler on both teams. Whether my judgment was correct was unimportant. What mattered was that suddenly I was envisioning myself down on the mat, wrestling against one of the athletes who were there legitimately. My idea was born. I wondered what would have happened, what the people in the bleachers would have thought, if I had emerged from one of the locker rooms in a uniform, and took to the mat. They wouldn’t have even batted an eye, I had decided, because I knew I looked at least as young as any high school kid. I knew, because people told me all the time, never realizing how offensive it was to me. I thought about it for the next few days, modifying the fantasy bit by bit to make it more realistic. Soon, I had myself in the starting lineup of a high school team, winning match after match over every opponent who crossed my path. After a few weeks, it had turned into more than a fantasy, and was well on the way to becoming a plan. There was a reason why I fantasized about something so strange. I had left something undone in high school, because of a momentary lapse of courage that had haunted me ever since. It was what had ended my high school career. Late Saturday afternoon during the regional tournament in my senior year I wrestled the most important match of my life. A win meant a berth in the state tournament, but a loss meant my season and high school career were over. My opponent was a beatable senior from Vanceboro who had been seeded 6th. I wrestled well, and scored a takedown in the first period. During the second period I picked up two more points on a reversal that took nearly the entire period to earn. Heading into the third period I had a solid 4-0 lead. Knowing I would start on top, I planned to kill as much time as possible, surrender a two-point reversal if I had to, and then run out the clock. This strategy of building a lead and then sitting on it had been effective for me throughout the season although my coaches hadn’t been happy about it. Initially, things went according to plan in the third period. With forty-five seconds left in the match, I gave up the reversal when my opponent was pressing. I looked at the clock and saw that there were thirty-nine seconds remaining. With a two-point lead, all I had to do was stay off my back, and victory would be mine. It didn’t unfold that way. A few minutes later I found myself sitting against a cold gymnasium wall, covered with perspiration, with my head in my hands. As I struggled to regain my breath I was despondent over blowing a four-point lead and losing what turned out to be the last match of my high school career. I looked up long enough to hurl my headgear high into the crowded bleachers, without concern about whom or what was in its path. Without bothering to watch its flight, I again buried my head as my agony intensified. I had relived the final moments of that match in my mind a thousand times. Nobody but me, of course, knew that I had chosen to give up the third back point to end the match rather than continue into overtime. I never told anybody, not even my best friend. It stayed with me, though. I never went more than a few days without experiencing the pain that goes with remembering. If I’d had the fortitude to go into overtime, what could I have accomplished? No matter what, it was a painful ending that left so many questions that I had been tortured by ever since. Brad just laughed at what I had said. He probably hadn’t even heard me clearly, or didn’t realize that I was completely serious. How could he? I asked him again. It was important to me to know how he felt. “I’m not joking, Brad,” I said. “What do you think? Could I go back?” The smirk disappeared from his face after I repeated it. It was then that he knew I wasn’t joking, and was seriously considering the idea. Nevertheless, he needed one more confirmation. “You’re serious? What do you mean, ‘go back’? How could you do it? Don’t you think somebody would recognize you?” “I’ve already thought it out, of course,” I replied. “I couldn’t do it here. I’d have to move away, and become a different person in a different place.” “Oh, now it makes sense,” he said sarcastically. He shook his head in a mixture of amusement and dismay. “I need to hear you say it. Are you serious about this?” He paused for a moment. “This is just about wrestling, right?” “Brad, I blew it my senior year,” I pleaded. “You know that. I should have gone much farther. Most guys get two or three years on varsity, so a mistake like that isn’t fatal. It isn’t fair that I only had one year. I was up a weight class, too. I had no business being at 167, but I still pulled out a lot of wins. Just think if I could have stayed at 155.” I didn’t even mention my mother. She had passed away midway through that season, as a result of injuries suffered in a car accident.