Like I've told you all before, I wrestled at Temperance Bedford, where I was average at best. We wrestled the best competition we could find week in and week out, and I rarely placed higher than third at tournaments, often times much lower, but I loved the sport back then, and I continue to love it now.

   We had a big enough team that we ran two varsity squads, sometimes a JV team after those two, and a freshmen team and still had kids leftover that didn't get to compete all that often, that's what happens when you have 11 state championship banners, 5 runner-up finishes, and at one time more than 20 straight final eight appearances in the state tournament. I was proudly a member of both a state championship team, and a runner-up finish, but was also on the team that broke the streak of finals appearances.  That last bit is a story for another day though.

   I was a member of the Varsity "B" squad from day one in high school, the only freshman that year to make the squad for the entire season, it sounds impressive, but although we were ranked, and did finish, first in the state, and had a wealth of wrestlers in all the other weights, we only had two real heavyweights, so by default I was the b-teamer before a wrestle off even occurred. The other guy, wasn't very good either, but he was slightly better than me at the time, so we settled into those roles, and I was his back-up for three years.

   Our B team wrestled a lot downriver, as it wasn't all that far to drive for us compared to where the varsity was always going, and while back then a lot of teams downriver weren't as good as we liked to compete against, there were always individuals that were among the best in the state, and it was great experience for us to compete with them.

   As a B-teamer, I occasionally would wrestle in JV meets as well, because the schedule wasn't completely full of varsity competition for us. By my junior year, I was decent, much better than a JV kid should be, but still stuck behind Rick, who had become one of the best in the state by that point, that's how I ended up wrestling in the Melvindale JV tournament early that season. Ironically I wrestled only Melvindale kids on my way to a tournament championship, one of whom, was Tim Lee.

   Lee was a freshman then, and hadn't wrestled but a few matches, it showed as I pinned him in the second round in under 15 seconds. I caught him with a head and arm, and the bug man, who wasn't that big yet just didn't know how to get out of it.

   I didn't give it much of a thought, then in February, we were invited to wrestle in a double dual with Melvindale and another school that I don't recall off the top if my head. Lee was the varsity guy by then, and I went out and expected to win easily, knowing exactly how bad I had beaten him a couple of months earlier.  My oh my how he had improved in only that short time.

   I tried a head and arm to open the match, but as I learned, you can't trick a good kid into falling for that twice. He countered it and took me straight to my back, luckily for me, we were near the edge of the mat, and our momentum carried us out of the circle. We had to re-start, but they had given him the take down, so I was in the down position, and losing 2-0. My go-to move there is a "fat roll" as my coaches christened it, but it is know by many things, the wing and roll most commonly. I don't remember the exact details of the rest of the match, but I do know that it went the full six minutes, and that I only won by a point or two, much different than the kid I had tossed around months earlier.
 
   Lee went on to finish second in the state either that year or the next, maybe both, I can't recall, but I do remember watching him against Cosell Beavers, the 3-time state champ from Dundee, and my personal nemesis, and not believing that it was the same kid.

   Anyway, that was one of my early experiences with downriver wrestling, I also competed in the Lincoln Park individual tournament a few times, and even placed a couple of them, I'll share those stories and more as the season progresses.