Why aren’t you wrestling in college
I’ve been asked before why I’m not wrestling in college. I wrote this before I graduated high school and it’s probably good to have this in my blog despite the fact that I wrote this in April 2003.
Yeah, hm, one would think colleges would be banging on my door. But several factors make up the reasons why I didn’t wrestling in college.
1) The minimum weight class in college is 125, where the guys there are like 135-140 cutting weight to get to that weight class. I’ll never be as big as any of them. They are that big even in D3 college wrestling. I’m just not big enough (i could lift more) to wrestle 125 in college.
2) I achieved everything one can acheive as a high school wrestler. I don’t really have dreams of wrestling college. When I look back at high school, the first thing and the most important thing I will always remember is wrestling. I don’t want to do the same for college. I want to look back on college as the years where I learned how to be a successful adult in society, having fun, and studying my fucking ass off. College wrestling is a huge committment which I don’t really want to committ to. It won’t get me anywhere closer to my degree.
3) Only two of the 5 schools I applied to have wrestling teams - Rennselaer Polytech and Worcester Polytech, both division 3 programs. On the national college level, I’m actually not that good a wrestler. The competition in college is unreal, even at division 3.
4) Division 3 programs can’t (afford to) offer me scholarship money for wrestling.
5) Despite my accomplishments, division 1 and 2 wrestling programs across the country don’t generally recruit wrestlers from New England. They prefer to recruit kids from PA, IA, OH, MN, NJ, and CA, states where wrestling dominates winter sports, where the competition down there would kill any wrestler from new england. Bigger/better wrestlign programs jsut aren’t interested in me.
6) I got offered a very nice academic scholarship to Northeastern University. I have a 3.65 gpa and stuff, so I wasn’t depending on my wrestling alone to get me into/through college.
From here on out, I no longer compete, I’m a college student and a high school All-American in wrestling
Thanks for asking.
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