Our Ash joined wrestling this winter. It was basically an intro to Wrestling Club where they practice twice a week, learn technique and then have “meet” at the end of the season.  Her PE teacher was one of the coaches and suggested that she would probably like it and do well. Of course we knew that she would be one of very few girls, but she really wanted to do it, so we said, “why not?”  Over the past year and a half we have been getting to know her better and discovering more and more about her personality. And, she has been having fun exploring options and opportunities that would never have been available to her in Haiti (especially being a girl.) She is pretty diverse in her interests. She loves to sing, dance, dress up, and do girlie things. Yet, she is athletic, extremely competitive, and loves to play aggressively. Whenever given a choice between athletics or arts, she always chooses athletics.  I love that she is so bold and not afraid to try new things. I, however, need a lot of practice at being a “sports” mom.  1) I am like the least competitive person I know (unless it’s 80’s trivia) so it’s hard for me to get motivated to yell things from the sideline. Because truthfully, I don’t really care who wins, as long as everyone is having fun. 2) I can’t yell. I simply can’t do it. I can sing and belt out a note like no one’s business, but when it comes to yelling, I just can’t get very loud. So, I feel bad that Ashley probably can’t ever hear me yelling encouragement at her. Maybe I should start bringing a megaphone. That’d make me at least look hardcore. Anyway, here are some photos from the one meet they had at the end of her season.

She had some decent moves (according to my husband who actually knows about wrestling.)

Unfortunately, she had to wrestle boys who totally outweighed her, so even if she took them down, she couldn’t keep em down.

She really had a hard time with not being able to keep them down. I don’t know if during practices she got to wrestle smaller kids, but she did not deal well with it. We felt really bad for her cause those boys were pretty big.

She’s pretty scrappy!

This little girl was cracking me up. She was a brute. The funniest thing was that she would just pin all these boys, then so effortlessly lay on them while looking up and smiling at her parents.

Ash wrestled her friend Quinn last and that was a little bit better of a match since he was a little slimmer than the other boys.

So, when she did get him down…

She was able to hold him down.

Of course, Quinn had his fair share of take downs.

I must say, it is very hard to watch your daughter being wrestled to the ground by boys. But, the lesson involved overrides any uneasiness I have.