“I’ve been on varsity for four years and I was captain of the boys wrestling team for my junior and senior year. This year, I had great aspirations to go to state for wrestling and to achieve that, I went to two different wrestling clubs at the same time and practiced with state-level wrestlers.

But in September, right before a very big state level tournament, I had shattered my collarbone at practice wrestling with a bigger partner, which was a really huge hindrance for me going through the year and trying to keep my practice up. Because of the severity of the break, I was not able to compete again until January, and it took me away from the practice that I wanted to get. It removed a lot of my opportunities to continue improving in hopes of getting to the higher level competition.

About six months prior, I had broken my radius, and having that shatter was incredibly heartbreaking. I had already had such a burning passion to improve because the year before I had told myself so much that I wanted to go to a higher level of competition. But, I was so caught up in the weight of the situation that I was really discouraged.

I overcame a lot of this discouragement by looking at my team and seeing how they were doing during the year and trying to get myself to focus more on them, more than myself. Some of my teammates, my family and people from my wrestling club really helped me get through it. And one of the things that helped me to forget about it was helping out my teammates and uplifting them. I did that by sometimes leading prayer circles for my team or motivating some teammates before their matches.

The biggest struggle was the anxiety of every single doctor’s appointment where I would have no clue what would happen next, whether I’ll be able to compete or not. It was very difficult to put myself back in after such a long hiatus. I had all these feelings that I wanted to continue despite my injury. But no matter what I did, I would still be reminded of the injury through the pain. Even though I didn’t need my sling, my collarbone was really heavy and laden with hardware, and I would feel it when I was even just lightly practicing. It was very hard to ignore.

After my injury, I’ve learned to become more humble and to enjoy my sport for what it’s worth because I won’t wrestle forever. I took it far more seriously than I should have, and learned to love wrestling rather than feel that I need to have it. The positive from this was that I had a whole lot better mindset, and that my fear of loss and embarrassment had diminished greatly.

People shouldn’t let things keep them down. Falls, losses and setbacks are something that are completely up to whoever gets them and what happens after is completely up to them. They should aspire to recover as best as they can.”