How I Overcame the Fear of Failure As a Chubby 12-Year-Old

Spoiler: It hurt a lot.

Photo after my first win during 7th-grade wrestling.

At first, I was resistant to the idea of joining wrestling. I didn’t love physical contact from anyone when I was younger — much less so from strangers.

Most boys start wrestling because their dad wrestled, but I started because I got cut from basketball and my mom wanted me to stay active during the wintertime.

“Giving wrestling a try” that year would go on to change the course of my life in a million different ways, but I had no idea of that at the time.

All I knew was that wrestling was really fucking hard.

All I knew was that I wasn’t cut out to be anything other than mediocre in wrestling. I finished my first season with a record of 4 wins and 14 losses.

This was actually a decent record for an uncoordinated, kind of chubby 12-year-old in his first year in a contact sport, so I decided that the next year, I’d give wrestling another go.

I won 4 matches my first year, the next year had to be even better, right?

Wrong.

In my second year of wrestling, I changed teams. I didn’t know it at the time, but the new team I joined was more competitive.