Regional Wrestling Tournament

I am going to have to "post date" this entry as I have been too busy to write over the past two weeks.

As mentioned in the last post, my wrestlers participated in the Regional Wrestling Tournament on the 12th and 13th in Allen, Texas (close to Dallas).

The other assistant coach and I left on Thursday evening after school. We decided to follow the head coach and then team, who left at 12:00pm, as neither of us wanted to miss another day of school. Our decision ended up being a bad one, as a large snow storm hit Dallas and the surrounding area that evening. The snow storm was a pretty big one, dumping snow on a city, and state, that is ill prepared for that kinda of weather. The roads were terrible on our way up to Dallas and continued to get worse with every hour we were on the road. Closures and cancellations continued to be reported over the radio, but conversations with our head coach, who was already at the hotel, confirmed the wrestling meet would be on - no matter what.

About 30 minutes away from our destination, my car spun out of control. I am pretty used to driving in the snow since I am from Minnesota, but I guess I wasn't good enough. The roads were bad, and I ended up spinning out and going in the ditch. My car got hung-up on the cable divider that separates the highway system. We tried to push the car out, but we weren't able to get the car to move. As we were digging around the car, a large truck pulled up and asked if we needed help. The man got out and with a heavy Southern accent told us he was from Mississippi and was amazed by all of this snow. We tied a rope to my car and tied the other end to his hitch. We were slowly pulled out of the ditch and into oncoming traffic, which for some reason, did not seem to be slowing down, despite the hazard lights of both my car and the Mississippian's truck. Once traffic died down, I did a U-turn in the middle of the interstate to get going in the right direction again. I got stuck again while doing the U-turn in the 8+ inches of snow that was now in the interstate.

Eventually, we made it to Dallas and then to Allen. My car limped to the motel... missing most of my bumper, passenger-side headlight, and with some minor engine damage... the car still run though and got us the whole way home from Allen on Saturday evening.

My kids wrestled tough at the tournament, but I only had one individual go on to the State tournament. Our 102 pound wrestler will be competing in State this upcoming weekend!