Vlog #1 - Guest Coaches

During our Monday practice at Team Hammer--the best youth wrestling club in Kansas City :)-- we had some guests come in and coach the kids. They are wrestlers that I had the pleasure of coaching when they were youths. They are now successful high school wrestlers and they did a great job coaching the young kids and then had an insightful discussion about the transition from youth wrestling to the high school level where the expectations and competition is much higher.

Video and Transcript below:

Transcript: "Hey, Coach Tony here. Just wanted to make a really quick little vlog about what happened last night at practice, which was great. We had two guest coaches come in. They were two wrestlers that I got to coach in youth wrestling and they made the transition to high school wrestling within the past couple of years and they've done really well for themselves and we had them come in and talk about that transition from being youth to the high school where the level of competition is a lot higher.

It was just interesting. They talked a lot about having discipline and getting to practice. The stuff that you do in youth, but one of my favorite questions was 'when do you do your homework?' because I'm a big supporter of school work and finding a time in the day that you can do it and being disciplined enough to do it pretty much the same time of day. Anyways, one does it right as he gets home from wrestling. He takes a shower. He eats dinner. Then does his homework immediately. Then he does other stuff.

The other was a procrastinator like I was. Which is....get home, shower, eat dinner, do your other stuff first, but still find time to do your homework. It's super important. Penn State requires a really high GPA. Oklahoma State. All these really great wrestling schools. You've got to have the academics to go with it. They don't take dummies. You're not getting people to do your work for you. You have to learn, especially when they're young, to pick a point in the day, knock it out, just get used to it, it's just part of their routine.

The other great question was that one of the wrestlers asked, or maybe it was me. I can't remember. 'When do you get your Fortnite in?' All the kids love Fortnite. They love video games. I love video games. And they both had different, but good answers. One of them said that they can do it after their homework is done.That's the one that likes to do their homework first.

The other one just said 'I just play in the summer.' So he doesn't get distracted by video games throughout the year. He's a really focused dude. They're both really great people.

So just two different options. You can have your fun in the summer, or assuming you get your work done right away when you get home, you can have your fun after work, after you do your homework and all that other stuff.

Again, I love when kids have fun. I love when they earn their fun. I know my own kid, he does the work part first, either a work out or some sort of practice, and then he's free to watch TV and play video games. Half the time I play with him. It's the same for me.

These are really good habits that we want the kids to build and take them into their adult life. Knock out the hard stuff. The essential stuff first. And then have a blast doing whatever else you want because you've earned it.

So, just wanted to put that out there. Build those good habits young and keep up with it. It's a learned skill just like wrestling is a learned skill. Getting your work done, your homework, your school work, behaving in class, all learned skills. So make sure we support that, positively. And these kids are going to be amazing. Just like these other two are.

So...cool."