Monday, March 28, 2011

Wrestling, People with Disabilities, and the NCAA

Ok so if you know our family at all, you know we LOVE wrestling!! We have lived and breathed it for way too long! :) Our 2 oldest sons, who are now almost 23 and 21, have wrestled for years, through pee wee wrestling and beyond. They were both 3 time Colorado State placers in high school and one of them was a Colorado State Champion! Now he is wrestling for the Colorado School of Mines and qualified for the NCAA Division II National Championships this year! So cool!!! :)

And.....if you know anything about our family, you will know we are an adoptive family and that we have 3 little girls with Down syndrome as well! Just in the last 2 years, our family has grown by 4. To be more exact, between April 17, 2009 (Madalyn's birth) and October 14, 2010 (our girls' Gotcha Day), we added 4 kids to our family!! Wow!!! That is really only a year and a half! (I don't normally think of it that way and no wonder I am sooo tired!!). hee hee!! We gave birth to our precious peanut with DS, adopted our little pumpkin (our youngest son through foster care) and then proceeded to go to a certain Eastern European country to adopt 2 more sweet girls with DS. Wow! Geez!! & Yikes!!! :))

Anyway... all our other children are pretty "typical" and the world of people with disabilities was basically new to us. We got a crash course pretty fast, though, and I have to say that I am soooo glad we did!! What a crazy, busy, always interesting life!!!!!

But that is actually not the point of this blog post.....

I saw
this article about a young man who won the NCAA Division I National Championships in wrestling and I was automatically interested! This young man is doing this with a disability!!! He only has 1 leg!!! It was just so cool to me and I just had to share his story!!! A combination of all things wrestling and disabilities! I just think it is awesome and I hope you will too!!

Here's a little video of one of our younger sons wrestling! His older brothers will be quite proud of him!! Daniel is in the purple.




This is a video of our son, Jordan, during one of his matches at the NCAA Division II championships in Nebraska a couple of weeks ago. Jordan is in the blue and the other young man is from Belmont Abbey. Not sure where that is, but it is another Division II school somewhere.. :)) Oh, yea and please ignore the stressed out mom of the wrestler comments you can hear in the video! hee hee You can turn the volume down on the media player.




My point from showing you the above videos is so you can see how hard they have to work to wrestle with 2 legs! If you watch their legs, you will realize how much they use them during the match. Both legs!! I can't imagine this young man winning a national championship with only 1 leg! Truly Amazing!!! I wish I could see a video of that!!!!!



Here's a pic and part of
the article....

PHILADELPHIA - Anthony Robles finished his NCAA wrestling career in history-making fashion. Robles, who was born without a right leg, took a 7-1 decision from Iowa sophomore Matt McDonough to win the 125-pound title at the NCAA wrestling championships Saturday. The Arizona State senior got the only takedown in the first period of the match and worked a pair of tilts to secure five back points. "I had a lot of butterflies going out there.," said Robles, who admitted he's most likely done as a competitive wrestler but wants to remain involved in one facet or another. "This year I think that was the biggest difference in my wrestling, was my mental game. Going into every match I was real relaxed, real calm. But before that, before this match, it was nothing but butterflies. I felt like I was going throw up, I was so scared I almost started crying. "But it's just the atmosphere. It's the true athletes that are able to just overcome that." Pretty neat!!

So to end this post....above are the pictures/videos of wrestling and the NCAA.....

Below is a picture of the sweet, cute, amazing, smart, wonderful, and did I mention cute and amazing " people with disabilities" part of this post?!



If these 3 are a "picture" of people with disabilities, then where can a get some more?? :)) Oh yea, at the
Reece's Rainbow website! That's where we found 2 of our precious treasures! You better go look, you might find your little precious one there too!

I LOVE THESE GIRLS!!!!!!

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And your ears will hear a word behind you, "This is the way, walk in it", whenever you turn to the right or to the left. Isaiah 30:21

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For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
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