WA State Lil boys wrestling State Tournament 

Spokane Convention Center April 12th 2014

 We drove over to Spokane on Friday night to get ready for the big tournament. This was our third weekend in a row in Spokane. The kids love to go swimming at the hotel so that was the first thing we did upon arrival. Then we went to see the Rio 2 movie. It was pretty good, it was fun to see them travel to Manaus in the movie, we told the kids that is where uncle Dave served his mission so they thought that was pretty cool. Saturday morning came and Dax and I went across the street to the convention center. This is the 27th year that they have held this tournament. In 2012 they set a Guiness Book of World Records for the most wrestling matches wrestled in one day. They had 1400 kids and this year we had 1400 kids as well. There were 40 brackets for the 5-6 age group. The tournament got off to an interesting start for Dax. They call all of the 5-6yr old kids to the pairing room, which is a room off to the side of the main hall where the kids sit like a herd of cattle, shoulder to shoulder on a concrete floor. There are about 300 kids in there and two ladies call off the names of the kids to pair them up for the matches and then they walk out together to the main hall to get assigned a mat to wrestle on. There were a total of 18 mats. Well they called name after name and still no Dax. They went through all of the byes and still no Dax. Finally the 300 was done to 3 boys, each was a different weight. They took the boys to the bracketing room and could not find any sign of these three boys on any of their lists. Luckily the bracket that Dax would have been in based on his weight had a bye, so they were able to call the boy out of the stands that was given the bye and have him wrestle Dax. Dax had been waiting on a cold concrete floor for over an hour. He did great and didn't complain, he was just a little confused. Finally he took the mat, it was a hard fight and Dax ended up winning 8-7. The boy he wrestled was very upset and his family surprised. The boy has placed in the top three of each of the tournaments he had wrestled in. I was relieved that Dax was able to prevail even after his long start. While waiting in the pairing room for his second match, there was a kid that was picking on one of Dax's buddies, he was poking him in the head gear and wouldn't leave him alone. As soon as I heard his coach tell him to keep his hands to himself I realized that it was Dax's next opponent. I told Dax what he was doing to his buddy Oliver and told him to go after him hard. Dax took him down and pinned him late in the first round.

For the finals they got to wrestle on a full sized mat. Dax had heard that the champion would get a big trophy, he was very excited. He then saw the trophy when they were getting ready for the awards ceremony before his match, that was enough motivation. He took a poll of his sisters, who wants me to win first? who wants me to take second? He told me that he was going to get first. I saw that the other kid had won his first match 2-1 (how does that even happen at this age???) and his second match 4-3. Very interesting to see such low scores. Anyway, Dax went after him right away and did his thing. The boy fought off of his back by clawing at Dax's face. That didn't slow Dax down, he turned him over and over again. We deferred to the third round and the boy had taken the down position, Dax turned him over and over again and the score was 13-1 going into the third. The head coach wanted Dax to take bottom because he thought that all he would have to do is escape and then it would be a tech fall. I hesitated because Dax can get caught on his back and he was dominating the kid from top. But we put him on bottom which made me pretty nervous considering the way the kid came after Dax, hacking away. But Dax responded well and winged the kid down when he tried to put the half nelson in from his knees. So the score was 15-1 and our coach waved his hands to stop the match thinking that it was a  tech fall. They sorted it out and Dax turned the kid shortly after and pinned him. Dax was very excited as were we all. He had a big smile on his face. We are all very proud of him. A few weeks ago we weren't planning on going to the tournament because it was his first year and we weren't sure how he'd do. The coach saw him at practice one day wrestling against some more experienced kids and said you're going to take him to state right? I said that we weren't planning on it, and he said we should because I think he has a good shot of placing. Coach came up to me before the finals and said, first year wrestling and going to the finals, no bad huh? I know he was really proud too.

Dax received his trophy and bracket at about 8:30pm, wrestling started at 9am. Janelle and the girls did pretty well, it was a very long day. I helped out coaching as much as I could. We heard later that the older kids didn't get done until midnight, so we consider ourselves lucky.

After a long day of wrestling we woke up to a beautiful Sunday morning. The kids had seen a neat little park with a huge radio flyer wagon. It is part of the Riverfront park in downtown Spokane. The kids had a lot of fun playing with some friends from the wrestling team and their families.

This was our first time seeing the Spokane Falls. They were pretty impressive. It is always intimidating to see and hear that much moving water. Mother Nature can be so violent and powerful. The water demands respect, and there were signs posted all over the park saying, stay out! stay alive!

Dayna was scared of the bridges over the masses of moving water but she made it over each one and posed for several pictures. It was a fun time with family and friends. We headed off on our journey home having conquered Spokane this year. Go Team Dickson!

And this is what we were left with on Sunday evening after a long weekend of driving, wrestling, waiting, and driving some more. The kids have lost their marbles!