Evanson: If you’re about hard work, discipline and focus, check out the state wrestling championships — they won’t disappoint

Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Let’s get ready to rumble!

Not really, but the state’s best high school wrestlers will do so respectfully this week at the OSAA state wrestling championships scheduled for Feb. 27 through March 1, at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum — and will do so proudly.

Show up at the Coliseum this week and you’ll find no octagon, no ring and definitely no celebrity looky-loos, but what you will find at the event is an arena full of mats, hard-working athletes and seats full of passionate fans.

Sure, you see enthusiasm on and around sports of all types. As you should. But there’s something different about what you find at a wrestling event, and while it may not be your thing in the beginning, in the end you’ll come to appreciate what has, does, and will continue to be as a result of a sport that most will tell you is in fact, all about the work.

Hard work pays off. While an adage nearly older than time, nothing truer has been said.

Be it by way of direct results, or rather the indirect returns that often come when you least expect or recognize it, time invested in doing something well typically results in such.

That doesn’t mean you’ll always win, reach your intended goal or even see the immediate fruits of your labor. But you will at times end victorious, hit your target, and always benefit either short or long term from any real effort to do just that.

Like with any level of competition, the primary goal is winning. Reigning supreme when the clock hits zero, you cross the finish line, after the final out is made or in the wake of any other culminating moment in sport, there’s no better feeling than finishing atop the heap of competitors on the court, field, track or, in this case, mat.

It’s accomplishment; relief; satisfaction; pride; and undoubtedly, joy as a result of the all the aforementioned.

But when things don’t go your way and it’s just the loss you get to leave with short-term, it’s the long-term rewards you get from wrestling that are the ultimate prize.

It teaches you discipline, responsibility, mental toughness and accountability, all tools for success on the mat, but equally to more valuable far beyond it.

Success is subjective. Different people define it in different ways.

Some people view it strictly by the scoreboard. As adults, some tie it to financial gain, career success or simply happiness. Each their own. But I think of it less as a result of accomplishment, and more from the satisfaction stemming from the endeavor to accomplish.

After all, we all want to win, but while “winning” is the prize, the real gift is the work you did in an effort to do so — for it never stops giving.

I attended the Pacific Conference boys wrestling championships this past week and as part of covering the event spoke to a number of athletes and the coaches contributing to their success. We talked about individual wrestlers, teams, potential matchups that lie ahead and of course the sport in general. But what all of those conversations eventually circled back to was the work they’d done, along with the work they still needed to do to have success.

Maybe Century’s Jorge Rodriguez said it best.

“This sport is all about the work you put in,” Rodriguez said. “Whatever you put into this sport, you get out, so I’ve just got to keep working as hard as I can. I’m going for first place (at state), and hopefully I go there and take it home.”

And maybe he will but, like him, hundreds of kids will step on the mat this week with one goal in mind, winning a state championship. But while a select group will raise their hand in victory, all will leave winners — the sport itself takes care of that.