This I Believe

Be there.

Be there with the willingness and capacity to learn, to take instruction, to make mistakes and to learn from them.You don’t have to be an overachiever to be successful. Sometimes all you need to do is show up.

I was 13 when I went to my first Finger Lakes Wrestling Club (FLWC) practice. I threw my bag into what I called our “vintage” 1997 Buick Skylark and my mom and I headed southbound from Geneva, NY to Ithaca. The drive along interstate 96 goes through what most would consider the middle of nowhere. Small pockets of homes are separated by farm fields and the occasional winery. This somewhat boring drive soon became the most frequent trip I had ever traveled.

I would like to say I was a fiercely competitive and gifted wrestler who excelled both on the mat and in the classroom. In reality, I was every substitute teacher’s nightmare. Regardless of my mediocrity and its inconvenience, my mother insisted on bringing me to practice every Sunday. We’d pay for gas in nickels and dimes to make the one hour drive to Ithaca, and when we couldn’t, my grandfather would bring me. FLWC practices were held at the Friedman Wrestling Center, which was a new multi-million dollar facility. My practice room up until this point was referred to as “the dungeon”, and rightfully so. Ventilation and water pipes lined the

ceiling and a thin layer of dust perpetually covered the cold hard mats. I couldn’t wrap my ahead around it, why go through all this trouble to bring me here? I wasn’t the best kid in the room; in fact, I got beat pretty badly almost every time I went. But I was there, every Sunday, without fail.

Now, 6 years later, my Sunday afternoons are still the same. Officially the “volunteer assistant coach” for the FLWC, I’ve begun to see the utmost importance in showing up. The most gifted young athletes undoubtedly catch my eye, but the ones with perfect attendance and a positive attitude do even more so.

One day I asked my mom, “Why’d you do it?” I had to know. “Why did you go through all that trouble?” I was the middle child of 5, so favoritism wasn’t an option, and I knew there were more important things my parents could have spent their time and money on.

“Because I believed in you,” she said to me, with the same soft tone she always had. “I know you didn’t, but I did, and I knew if I surrounded you with enough people that believed in you as much as I did you’d come around sooner or later.”

While exceptional skills are fairly certain to help separate yourself from the crowd, persistent effort is just as effective. There’s something about it that leaves a lasting impression on those who notice it. It’s important to remember the weight carries. Because nothing will ever happen if you don’t show up.