Wrestling Stories

           First and foremost, the names in this blog post will not be provided (otherwise blogging may come to an end very quick due the fact I may be dead).  The exact terms of the dares done to others will not be provided; I will only share the dares that I had to undergo.  Some of these stories are not directly about what we’ve done to pass the time, but what happens to us as well.  I will also not disclose the names of the wrestlers on my wish hit list, haha I really don’t have one . . .

            Recently at our opening tournament in Moorehead, Minnesota, we had an interesting experience with two people.  We arrived at our hotel and we had a quick team meeting.  The next order of business was to go work out.  That is where things got interesting.  Two women were waiting outside our hotel and in a position where every wrestler had to walk by them to get on the bus.  They may or may not have been drinking that night but all of a sudden, they took extreme interest in us.

            Here I should say that these two women are most likely older than my mom (sorry mom, I needed a reference point).  I want to assume they had nothing but the best intentions, but then things went south . . . quick.  At first it was our bus driver.  The poor guy endured questions along the line of “so, what else do you drive that is big?”  “Where are you going?”  “Can we get a private ride?”  That’s when I realized that the Panther Train wanted nothing to do with these two broads.

            So when the bus driver told them they could not set foot on the bus, they turned to the wrestlers still climbing on board the bus.  Someone leaked the top-secret information that we were going to workout.  So the questions from the cougars began to sound like, “can we come and get all sweaty with you?”  “What do you like to do for a workout?”  “Do you like to be sweaty.”  At this point all the wrestlers wanted to get the YMCA to workout and get away from these two women expressing cougar like characteristics.

            I have to give props to our bus driver, as all the wrestlers got on the bus one of these ladies forced her way up the steps to wish us good luck.  After her wishes of good luck, a few comments along the lines of “go away,” may or may not have been said.  This experience was all but ten minutes long, but one that I can look back on with teammates and laugh about someday.  Only God knows what was going through those women’s head, I don’t, so I won’t try and say what was.

            The next story has to do with the time my teammates and I climbed a mountain in Colorado Springs.  There is a trail called the Cog, an old railroad that is a majority incline up the mountain.  When I climbed it I was crawling from railroad tie to railroad tie at one point, I just told myself don’t stop moving.  I made it to the top in just over 30 minutes, as did the rest of my team.  This is where I should point out that in college wrestling 9 out of 10 weight classes cut weight, the other is the heavy weight.

           Like I said I will not name names, however when the last wrestler got to the top of the mountain, he had a few sasquatch calls to make.  In the process he lost his breakfast at the top of the mountain as well.  At this moment our entire team was laughing, there were two other climbers that day that had a few words for us as we were all laughing.  This is where I get my little sign off because they said it was terrible to be laughing at one person singled out.  From then on I have tried to live by the rule to laugh often, with everyone, but never at someone.  That was still a pretty funny scene to witness though.

            This next story has to do with a wedding.  I attended one of a good former teammate with two other teammates and my sister.  One of the wrestlers had a plus one that had something come up, so my sister took her spot.  The reception had two funny parts to it.  We were in a really nice hotel ballroom, the first part has to do with the video messages we could leave for the bride and groom.  Everyone gave a minute or two of congratulations and something nice to say to them.  The wrestler next to me kept his message brief and to the point.  He said, “Have fun tonight buddy (wink wink).”  The groom’s mom was holding the camera, she promptly lost it in laughter.

            The second funny part of this wedding occurred when the bouquet was going to be thrown out.  The DJ said any lady “who didn’t have a ring on it, to get on the dance floor.”  Twenty-four hours earlier my sister didn’t even know that she would be in a wedding.  Let alone catch the bouquet.  The way Bailey caught it was hilarious as well.  My sister played volleyball in high school, she wasn’t gifted in the height department but she has ups (major ups).  Stories made from weddings are usually never bad.  However, everyone out there who has dirt on me made me realize I am screwed for the day my wedding arrives and all that dirt gets thrown at me.

            All she had to do was reach her hand up and snatch the flowers out of mid air against two other women who made a jumping effort.  I think my sister surprised herself when she caught it and saw the amount of effort these other two women made and failed.  They took off their heals for the throw.  I don’t know if we broke some sort of social etiquette rule by catching a bouquet at a wedding with a plus one, but we had fun doing it.  Our mom laughed when she heard the story so there’s a win there.

My sister won the bouquet!

           The next story comes from a time long ago . . . in high school.  My senior year Ames qualified 5 wrestlers for state including myself and we were given a nicer Chevy Tahoe to take down to the state tournament.  Our head coach at the time had his morning coffee and was all fired up about our first round match ups.  He was pretty excited to get to the Well that he raced down to state.  Along the way we had to go under a bridge and we were going around 80 mph in a 65.

            That caught the attention of one of the many state troopers lined up in a speed trap that we had just set off.  So the lights go off and the state trooper pulls us over.  Our head coach isn’t happy.  The first thing our coach says to the officer is, “sir . . . you just took the jelly out of my doughnut.”  At that moment everyone in the van was silent and didn’t know weather to laugh or stay quiet.  The officer didn’t laugh, but as soon as he went back to his car the van exploded.

            In a similar situation, a bunch of wrestler’s in a van going to and driving back from a tournament, we play card games.  Either screw your neighbor (play the game and then you’ll realize why its named the way it is) or death card (this game hurts if a player is pissed off).  However, this is the wrestling version, if one loses they receive a strike.  After three strikes they must perform a dare of the groups choosing.  After one dare is complete, all the strikes for everyone is reset to zero.  There was an additional rule that if one “chickened out” of a dare, they had to buy a case of beer for each individual playing.  Which gave someone a monetary incentive to do whatever the group thought up.

            This dare kind of backfired on the group.  In the first round of playing this game it came down to three people with two strikes out of six players.  In the deciding hand I was against another wrestler with two strikes, I lost.  That was number three for me.  Just my luck to lose in the very first round of the game, I am rarely a lucky person.  However, my dare came back without much debate.  I was to take a dip of chewing tobacco and hold it for ten minutes.

            I have never done tobacco products in my life, I have never chewed, dipped, what have you.  I had no idea how to spit, or how big of a pinch to take.  I did have a good teammate walk me through it while the other four were laughing away.  My coach who was driving was like no don’t make him do it.  The other assistant next to him was like he’s going to puke, which made the coach laugh and change his mind.

            I got the dip in just fine, and it went to work.  In the first thirty seconds my lips went numb and I started to laugh really hard (I don’t know why).  From minute two to ten (I think it was ten minutes) I don’t remember anything but laughing and having a great, and I mean great time.  That was a once in a lifetime buzz, and it was awesome.  I have since never touched the stuff.  But if anyone reading this is looking for a starter brand, grizzly wintergreen is a great chewing tobacco to begin with.  The smell still gets me every time (I did like it).

The best tobacco I know

            I was accused once of cock-blocking a teammate of mine one night.  Drinks with alcohol in it may or may not have been involved.  Some facts need to be laid out here, the combination of consuming alcohol and wrestling do not mix.  Nothing good happens after midnight, and lastly some weeks the team spends a little too much time together.  After the bars I was driving people home from the bars, I got the lucky DD job.  One person who I drove home (his name shall remain unknown), thought he had a girl “in the bag.”

            When we got back to said person’s house, he wanted to wrestle me.  Since he still needed time to sober up I was able to keep him at arms length.  For the record I did not want to wrestle at this early morning hour, but my teammate did.  When I told him I wanted to stop he promptly bit my ear, then when I looked back he performed the same action on the girl that he thought was “in the bag.”  She was upset and wound up asking me for a ride home (nothing happened and nothing was “in the bag”).  The next morning I received a text message from my teammate, he was very upset and pissed off at me.  I didn’t bite anyone; as far as I’m concerned he did that to himself.

            I guess I have earned a negative reputation as a “wingman” when I have gone out with teammates.  But I actually listened to one teammate for tactics on what to do when being the “wingman.”  Nothing I said kept a girl’s attention with one of my teammates for more than three minutes.  As a result these events created a very interesting sauna conversation the next day.  But it is a story I’ll never forget because it was so funny, I thought I was helping . . . wrong.

            Speaking of wrestlers at a party, we kind of stand out when we like to have fun.  There was a weekend where Cedar Falls Finest was out in full force busting a house party here or there.  A house we went to for a party was hosted by a gal whom was fearing a knock on the door from the police.  She unplugged the music and flickered her lights and stood up on a table giving us the “get out” speech.

            The house instantly went quite, as she was finishing up her little speech one of the wrestlers (I still don’t know which one) said at room volume, “nice boobs.”  The house erupted in laughter, I wonder what was going through her head at that point.  She was trying to be serious and in an instant lost everyone’s attention.  We all wound up leaving though.

            I’ve seen streakers (not the female kind L ), a man eat deodorant, , illegal fireworks going off, nights straight from Jersey Shore, tequila night, cars on fire, slow pitch softball fights, first time buyers, a dog have the crap scared out of him (literally), head shots in dodgeball, nut shots in dodgeball, body shots (too hairy body shots), party fouls, people drinking too much, a coach and referee have a discussion (during a match), those are all stories, but not my favorite ones.

            The Rialto, or Toe for short, is the dining center between the Bender and Dancer residence halls where the team always goes to eat after practice.  There was on particular week where we noticed extra Toe employees staking out our table.  Apparently one wrestler had refused to take his dirty plates to the dish station.  These employees had to know who they were dealing with.  There were at least 25 wrestlers at this table, and three of them (dressed in Christmas sweaters), we didn’t care what they had to say.

Try to take someone seriously in this sweater, we couldn't.

            So as we were all finishing up our dinner, they send an employee over.  We had noticed we were being watched (they made that pretty obvious).  This guy is younger than all of our Dads, it is right before Christmas and he has selected a $H!T brown ugly sweater with a reindeer on it (he would have won any ugly sweater party hands down).  The first words that come out of his mouth are, “Hey Guythhs . . .”  Right away he got cut off when some said, “Oh my god, he has a lisp.”

            We lost it, I am a terrible person for telling this story, but I had to share it.  The Rialto employees really dropped the ball on that one.  They had three people and sent over the one with a lisp.  And they expected to get their message across . . . I’ll go ahead and let you decide if their strategy was effective or not.

            Speaking of the Rialto, some good memories are an initiation ritual.  Back when the Rialto still had trays, we would load one up with a ton of plates filled with leftover food and sauce (of all colors).  Then one wrestler would gather up the courage to walk over the dishwashing station and hit a snag, trip and send all the plates flying.  The first time I saw this the entire Toe became very quiet except for one table.  We didn’t make it obvious or anything about which the guilty party was.

            I have one semester left of college.  I can’t wait for what’s ahead of me.  There are still car sign dares, rum . . . I mean fun nights, finding out what the fox says, man stuff day, heart to hearts, finding out what was in the forecast, a fight at a wedding, catching critters, my awesome dance moves, forklift horrors, video game yelling (and breaking . . . mentally), drug testing laughs, food fights,a pay toll attendant get grossed out by a “kissing the coach dare," stories we will never tell our parents.  Who knows what our parents haven’t told us?  There will be more stories as time marches on, until next time, laugh often, with everyone, but never at someone.

Riley Banach

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