Heat

Invariably, the word heat brings to mind a feeling of exhaustion and hunger. It takes me to a time in my life when, to people on the outside, I appeared to be slightly insane because of the torture I would put my body through.

I go back to one of those nights I spent sitting in a sauna. My head hangs low, and I feel the warmth emanating directly from my sweaty head. Beads of sweat gather and amass on my face until they give in to gravity, falling from the points of my face -- my cheek bones, the tip of my nose, my upper lip, my chin, the crowns of my eyes -- until they hit the ground. I used to think that I could count the pounds as they fell away, drop by drop. Rivers of sweat pour from my body, running swiftly and ceaselessly down the course of my skin.

Not a stitch of clothing remains dry, of course, but that’s the point. It’s like taking a fully saturated wash rag and wringing it out. No, not just one harsh wringing; rather, after you wring it once, you turn it around and wring it the other way. You do this four or five times until you think you’ve wrenched all the fluids out of it as you can. The washrag is dry enough now, and everything is fine, right? No one considers the rag itself, how each wringing motion tears at its very fibers. The sturdiest of cloths can withstand only so much battering, and the human body is no different.

For most of my senior high school wrestling season, I forced myself to sit in a sauna. At first, it was just a way to relax and calm down after a hard workout. Then it became something easy, a simple way to sweat because all I had to do was to sit there. I didn’t need to use up the few ounces of energy I had kept stored in my body; I could lose weight without working my body into complete exhaustion. So then, the saunas were just a new addition to the workout. Then it became a large portion of the workout. At first I simply sat in just my shorts, but then I began wearing layers. Before, the rivers of sweat flowed as freely as any river. They were open to the air and my body withstood this treatment. Once I put on the sweat suits and plastic conditioning suits, however, I never considered that my body was in danger of shutting down.

That year, three collegiate athletes had died due to dehydration and exhaustion from cutting weight. It was no wonder that my mother seemed to be so nervous when I would come home from practice and skip dinner. No wonder she gave me those alarmed looks on days before meets because my eyes were sunken in, surrounded by dark circles, my cheeks drawn tight. No wonder my strength and conditioning teacher commented on my dropping strength and how my maximum lifts had gone down since the semester’s beginning. No wonder my teammates commented on my skinniness and the protruding ribs in my side, the ominous dearth of body fat. How much more could I have taken?

Just think about it, the eerie addiction I had stumbled upon, the addiction to draining my body, of wringing myself dry. What would be the next step from this gateway? Would I lend myself to taking diuretics and laxatives to make weight, or would I try other means of purging my body? The odd thing was that I wasn’t doing this for body image. I didn’t look in the mirror and see fat where none existed, nor did I obsess over how tightly my clothes fit.

Before I knew it, however, the torture had come to an end. The heat was no longer a necessary evil, and when the need for the saunas had gone, so did the forced starvation and the purging of fluids. And so today it’s not easy for me to step back into a sauna. It takes me back to a time of confusion, of pain and misery. The hunger and exhaustion are gone but their memory hangs like a shadow. The shadow whispers with the flowing breeze, reminding me of lost goals, near misses, heartbreak, and long-gone friendships.

I can vividly recall the whispers of boys sitting in the back seats of buses, talking about girls and parties, our appointed freshman lookout watching for the coach to come back and to talk to us. It was always a good idea to have this rookie waiting at his post to warn the various rebels to spit out their chewing tobacco or to use fewer swear words (at least use them in quieter tones).

I can also hear the sound of the low roar of a crowd cheering, the distinctive voices of Logan’s dad yelling “Move!” and Chris’s mom screeching “Go Bobby!” and her voice trailing off without losing much momentum. I hear Amy’s call of “Come on, get ‘em!” I hear the yelling of coaches when I made mistakes and their praises and clapping when I succeeded. I feel the cool chill of the coliseum floor, the tears running down my cheeks, being wiped away with the dreams of championships. I feel the heat of the passion of victory, the competition, and the glory.

When I allow my mind to truly wander unchecked, I can feel the hum of a different crowd cheering, not for me, but for the matches taking place on the coliseum floor, the matches in which I had dreamt so long to be a part of yet I had fallen so short. I go through it all again, sitting in the stands of the coliseum watching when I had worked so hard in hopes of making it to those final matches.

The very mention of saunas and heat brings me back to that cold day in February. I get to a point in my reminiscing where all I can envision of this day are the cold, dark gray slabs of concrete as I dropped to my knees. I hadn’t even bothered to grab my warm-ups after that last handshake. I was bent over into a little ball, sobbing hysterically, sweat mixing with tears and snot. A warm hand now rested on my naked shoulder. I wanted to lash out, to tell the owner of that hand to go the hell away. I wanted to kick and scream, but all I did was look up to see the friendly face of Coach Smith. The coaches knew better than to talk to me after that match, but for some reason, this one had broken ranks and was stepping into a dangerous zone. Yet, he quelled my anger with his words. I’d never before heard someone tell me anything like what he said next, and I didn’t think I’d ever hear it again. He told me I had nothing to cry for; there was no reason to be upset. Bullshit! I wanted to yell, but he went on. “When my son is in high school, I hope he’s exactly like you.” He stood up and walked away, leaving me to think about what he had said.

It became a question of what I had done it all for. Why had I spent all those hours training and cutting weight if I was going to end up falling short of my goal of a state championship? A young man looking failure in the eye will always question the point of it all when the real lessons learned and the memories gained will remain hidden in the back of his mind. Eventually, when all doors have been opened, all possible explanations exhausted, and the journey thoroughly examined and analyzed, the answers will be there, waiting as obvious and explicit as ever. The images will come together and they will make sense at last.

I always had been notorious for acting on the need to spend extra minutes on stairmaster in the weight room after practices. As I climbed, my hood pulled over head as I watched the sweat fall, I knew that the time was invaluable. Some nights my mom would walk into the practice room, wondering where I was at because she'd seen everyone else leave already. Later, Lance's dad, a custodian at Wynmore Fitness Club, began letting us use the gym while he cleaned the facility. I tried engaging in aerobic workouts on the various machines, but eventually I found myself turning to the sauna to lose the weight.

My senior season has now become a haze in my mind, but several vivid memories do stand out. During the season, Lance, Chris, and I would eat very little at lunch. We preferred sitting in the locker room or the wrestling room to eat our meager meals rather than enduring the excess of the cafeteria. We would spend our Friday nights together to avoid parties or other social gatherings that presented countless temptations. After meets on Saturdays, we would sit together at a booth in fast food joints like Hardees or Taco Bell, and I would binge on greasy food and chug pop even though I knew I was not supposed to indulge like that. Even though I was spending my time with my brothers, I knew that the more illicit indulgences I took, I would need to spend more time in the heat.

It's the feeling of inhaling a dry heat that takes me back to the hot air of the sauna. I remember the loss, the pain, and the anguish, but I also remember the road to it. I cannot look back on those times and relate them solely to the self-imposed torture of cutting weight in saunas, however. Through all the hours spent training, conditioning, and wrenching off the extra pounds, the best metaphor I can think of to describe the lessons of wrestling as the bus ride going to or from a meet: the air blasting from the bus heater, the uncomfortable seats, the anxiety and the exhilaration, the bumps along the way, and the bonds formed at the back of the bus.

Whereas the word heat triggers these memories and refreshes me of the pain and agony of the journey, of the exhaustion and hunger, and of the insanity and torture, I don't really look at my wrestling experience through such a narrow scope. Cutting weight in a sauna had always been a solitary and stationary experience, one that makes a person all the lesser. Falling short of one's dreams is only forgivable if that person knows that he'd done everything he could to give it his best shot. I know this now, and I shall always remember that none of it had been in vain, and I shall always remember the fraternity and education permanently forged by the sport of wrestling.

I Simply Wasn't a Soccer Player

It's the smell that gets me. Every year in late August and September, when the air begins to cool off in the evening as the sun sets and the summer humidity is only a thing of the daytime. It's walking out the school doors and catching that whiff of freshly mown grass. For the first time since last spring, my nostrils aren't being tormented by the fierce heat of the day.

I stand in front of the west doors, taking in as much of the air as I can before I know I have to move on, walk to my car, and drive home. Beneath the smell of grass and the calm of the evening sky, I hear the faint noises of boys playing soccer, whistles blowing, players calling each other's names, coaches yelling, balls ricocheting of the crossbars, and a crowd cheering. It takes me back to a time in my life that I don't really talk about much anymore.

It's been years since I last touched a soccer ball competitively, but I've still managed to stay close to the sport. There were the two years I coached C-team soccer at the high school, the fall that Emily and I coached a youth team in our area, and all the times I have the wrestling team play soccer in the gym as an alternative to traditional conditioning.

The wrestlers (mostly macho, American football types) always grumble and ask why we play soccer, but I heard once that in an average game, a player will run about 5 miles. I don't know if it's true, but that possibly erroneous bit of data gives me good reason to figuratively step into my old soccer shoes and play a little bit. Even on a gymnasium floor, wearing wrestling shoes and playing against a hoard of boys, most of whom had never played before in their lives, the feeling of a ball at my feet really brings back memories.

Whether it's on a field as a coach, a gym floor with clumsy wrestlers, or waxing nostalgic as a 30-year-old teacher, my mind flashes through myriad images in my mind. Standing on the field under the stadium lights, alternating between hopping up and down and pulling my leg back to stretch my quads, I yell, "Let's go, Blues!" I wait for the ref to blow his whistle, his signal to start the game. I stay mostly focused, although briefly I do catch sight of a few fans rushing in a little bit late, not wanting to miss a second.

Soccer was an important step in my so-called initiation into manhood. Through games during drizzling cold rain and even sleet and snow, it was these times that I found myself standing up against that little voice inside that kept telling me to give it up. It was the time I had a nasty skin abrasion on my elbow, and some blood was soaking through my white jersey. Some crybaby player on the other team told the ref and I had to leave the field. I stepped off, had my elbow taped by the assistant coach, and spat on the field. Pussy, I thought to myself. He's just afraid of a little blood. Probably saw it as his only chance to get a break in the game. I'd been pushing him outside all evening; he couldn't get anything through to the middle. I went right back into the game, seeking to make up for the time I had to be off the field.

I'm still incredibly proud of how I overcame my inexperience and served my senior year as a starting defender. One of our stud juniors moved from outside defender to stopper and a fellow senior defender broke his foot early in the season, thereby opening a door for me to improve upon a junior season in which I spent most games on the bench waiting for us to run the score up so I could go in. I arose to the challenge of starting, not with ease, but with a feeling that I simply had to do my part for the team. That season, I often felt like I did more than my part. Most games, I ended up covering two or three different opponents because our midfield tended to drink too much beer on the weekends and couldn't get back on defense quick enough. I played my heart out at practice and persevered through sickness and injury when our studs often sat out because they didn't feel like practicing that day. I never spoke up to the coach about how it infuriated me that these guys got away with skipping out on training yet still played most of the games. I should have said something. I still feel like their weaknesses were the reasons we never lived up to our potential that year.

It's a memory that I don't revisit often -- my last competitive soccer game ever. In the state quarterfinals on our home field, we fell in overtime to a talented team from Wichita. As I watched the ball land at the back of our net, I fell to my knees. Some little kid -- the upstart forward I'd been shutting down all night -- patted me on the back and said, "Good game." He was a boy and I was a man, and I was the one in tears. I pulled myself together and walked slowly to the center of the field. I was numb to the cheers of consolation and my teammates' hugs. We ran our traditional lap around the field to greet the fans, some of them also in tears. I looked none of them in the eye as we ran past them and held our hands out to give them all five. I couldn't stand to hear the coach's speech after our lap; he had nothing important to say to me, at least. I hurried to the parking lot and jumped in my car. I don't know why, but I drove out into the county, still wearing my uniform, shin guards, and cleats, and found some empty road that had just recently been paved for some new residential development.

I remember jumping out of my Ford Bronco, sitting on the cool pavement. I held my arms around my knees and dropped my head, sobbing. With the full moon shining above, I couldn't find any reason as to why I should be so upset. I wasn't a "soccer guy" and that much was evident. In high school, it always seemed to boil down to this question: what was my identity anyway?

My wardrobe consisted of few t-shirts that weren't wrestling shirts, and my daily workout attire consisted of mesh shorts (not the sleek soccer-style shorts) and the afore-mentioned wrestling shirts. I was a wrestler, not a soccer player, at heart. It wasn't long after I started winning wrestling tournaments in 8th grade that I figured out that I could use wrestling moves on the field. I figured out that with a few well-played slide tackles and hip bumps, along with some arm-ties when over-zealous forwards reached in too far, I could make a defender to be reckoned with. These were the things that made up for the fact that most of the time I couldn't pass the ball straight to save my life.

I made the varsity team my junior year because few of the others on the team were faster than me in sprints or even the mile. I had spent my summer running, lifting, and staying out of trouble. No one else on the team could squat over 350 or bench 250 like me. A few years later, I found out that the old coach, now an assistant principal, had watched me during the physical and endurance trials and told the new coach that he simply had to take me for varsity. I'm glad the old British fellow hadn't witnessed me during the field and technique trials.

By the time I got into high school soccer, I had distanced myself from my old traveling competitive team. Eventually, the team disbanded and the guys went their own separate ways. I was just a player in the fall season -- the high school season. I wasn't a member of Topeka United, Lazio, or Kansas Select, nor was I slated to be on any Olympic Development Program team. After all, I was just a late starter with sloppy technique and no fancy ball tricks. That made no matter to me, however. I just liked to play.

I liked the feeling of a solid strike on the ball, sending it across the field to an open teammate, or hitting a slide tackle just right, so clean and so perfectly-timed that there was no danger of getting carded. I like jumping in the air to head the ball, feet pushing off just right to get max lift, keeping eyes open long enough to see the ball sent right where I wanted it to go.

Soccer was the only time I can remember hearing a crowd cheer for me as I competed. A roar being sent up through the fans as I would make a play. I never was a soccer guy. I never had Adidas Copas, I never played for a professional coach, and I never fit the stereotype. Nonetheless, soccer helped make me who I am today. That's why on a stray evening in the fall, whenever I end up staying late at school to catch up on some work, part of me will always be out there on that field, shin guards strapped on, cleats dug in to the field, itching to knock an arrogant forward on his rear end.