Just gross...

Some of the best personalities I've met covering high school sports came with wrestling. I make fun of the sport, but there really are some great people competing in it.

I still remember one of the first wrestling meets I had ever covered. I was interviewing one of the wrestlers in the locker room, which was just about empty by then. He glances behind me a time or two, trying not to laugh. I finally notice and turn around...and one of his teammates is mooning me.

The kid showing the moon ended up being a state champion a year later. That's one of the tamer stories I know about him.

 

I'm working on a wrestling feature right now. I stepped around the mat, but I think I'm OK on the herpes front. Though I did shake some hands while I was there.

I always enjoyed covering wrestling because of the kids and because a dual match can be over in about 30 minutes.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed my HS wrestling days (98 lber); felt I was in the best shape of my life, to this day; um except for the starving aspect (parents eat T-Bone for dinner; salad for me; just wrong) The constant intensity is unmatched in any other sport.

 

Your dual meets must have a ton of pins and forfeits .. 14 matches in 30 minutes? That's cookin'.... It's about an hour and a half or two hours usually for me.

 

Maybe during the eight-day shutdown, the Star Tribune's copy editors can decide whether it's Herpes gladiatorum or gladiatorium.

But as a former wrestler, I can attest our coach, a former college champion, was fanatical about keeping the mats clean and disinfected, and wrestlers using body wash in the shower. Or is that too much information? ;D

 

are you sayin' there's something wrong with my gear?

 

I found swimming parents to be crazier than wrestling parents.

 

Can't wait for Vinny Mac to find an angle to use from this knowledge.

 

I read somewhere that by giving wrestlers Valtrex as a preventative measure the spread of this particular strain of herpes could be cut tremendously -- something like 94 percent. Can you imagine the uproar, though, if some public high school league started encouraging or requring that of its wrestlers.

As a former wrestler who picked this nasty little bug up at a tournament many moons ago, I'm glad to hear Minnesota is taking some steps to keep a widespread outbreak from happening. It ain't fun to have.

The sad part is it's largely preventable with good hygiene -- both mats and wrestlers. But everybody involved has to be religious about it. I'm 99.9 percent sure I know who I picked it up from -- saw the sore after wrestling him. I knew him well and he wasn't so hot on the whole bathing thing. Pisses me off because during my wrestling days I would shower 3 to 4 times a day -- often once or twice during long breaks at tournaments. And I was a hawk about making sure our mats got disinfected before and after practice. I still got the shit.

 

was talking with a school trainer last night at a bkb game. His school is one of the few in this state that has wrestling and a lot of schools dont disinfect their mats after matches...

 

That's simply disgusting.

Those things need to be sprayed to shit and hung up in the cradle after every match.

 

I'm surprised he was allowed to wrestle with an open sore. At my son's tournaments, pre-tournament they do practically a full-body check (no private checking, thank god), and anyone with a sore is tossed. You also have to have your fingernails cut just about to the quick, too. Before one tournament I frantically raced out at 7 a.m. to find a suburban convenient store that carried clippers. The worst part was giving up my parking spot -- those kiddie tournaments fill 'em up fast.