I began this self-study with the hope of putting language to my experience building this team for the school. Partly, it was important to document the history of the program, to show how it quickly grew, and to take the time to plan for the future. The rewards I reaped from doing this inventory were what I expected: I’m proud of having performed this magic trick of creating something from nothing. It’s constant, sometimes gruelling, and largely private work. So it felt good to write it all down and acknowledge how much has happened in a relatively short span of time.

Reflecting on the process of building the wrestling team also surfaced an important set of questions, both for me personally and for the institution, about effort: What does it look like for a middle or elementary age child to push hard? How do you convince children and their parents of the value of doing something tough? How do you scaffold hard work so that it eventually becomes intrinsic? Is there such a thing as pushing too hard? How does a sport like wrestling, where so is superficially unreasonable (too uncomfortable, too many hours, too demanding), make a home for itself in the culture of LREI?

First, a note of self-disclosure: I am a man who is in many ways a typical byproduct of the wrestling community: I default to hard work. I am a devoted believer in the power of pushing. I believe in the character it builds when you do the right thing over the easy thing, I believe in the discipline of it, and that ultimately effort yields results.  When I was a kid, Olympian Kenny Monday told us at a summer camp, “Wrestling doesn’t just build character, it exposes character.” I enjoy my leisure time just like anyone, but when it comes to training, getting a job done, setting goals, I am uncompromising and inflexible. I always felt that a lack of commitment was disrespectful to those who believed in me. So my word is important. If I say I’m going to do it, nothing will stop me. Not weather, not injury. I am anti-excuse. In the way that some build their moral code around compassion, or generosity, I build mine around a ruthless and unyielding personal integrity. I believe good comes from keeping your commitments. I have been called many things for this: intense, inflexible, reliable, stubborn, helpful, difficult. And I’m not particularly moved or bothered because one side effect of my devotion to hard work is that I don’t care much about what other people think. The right thing is the right thing no matter who is watching or what their opinion of it is.

If I didn’t feel strongly about this, I wouldn’t have stuck with coaching. But, as I know from my own life and as I’ve seen from the lives of my wrestlers, the way you approach the sport can and will change the way you approach your life. A good team is an immersive experience that changes your routines and your values. A good team is a cult of discipline and integrity.

When I started coaching, it was a public high school team. Most of the wrestlers’ families were absent – some working too hard to pay close attention, others almost teenagers themselves, with their own stories. The kids bought in to the program because – in large part – of my attention. I was persistently in their business about schoolwork, their diet, their weekend plans. I gave them structure, a really hard time, and – after not too long – a taste of minor fame when the workouts paid off and they started to win. To be that kind of coach in that kind of school didn’t require anything of me except my time. It played to all my strengths. Those high school wrestlers needed that kind of discipline and they flourished with it. The school and their parents both were non-factors; the team was everything, and I was the team.

Creating a program at LREI has revealed two things, the first of which is that play and rest are strategically important and healthy, both for a team and for me. This isn’t totally new. One of the things I loved and appreciated most about one of my first jiu jitsu professors was the way he made everything into a game. He was an impish Brazillian with a smile that took up more than half of his face, a gift for making hard work entertaining, and paradoxically one of the most dangerous competitors in the sport. I borrowed a lot from him and, even in my days of coaching high school students, I understood that while the shared hardship of relentless practices built strong bonds among teammates, so did shared silliness. We’d end practices with games of dodgeball, I’d prescribe marathon hula-hoop and sessions for a wrestler who complained of being a bad dancer, and everyone was graced with a nickname. Still, the glue and the engine behind that high school team was intensity.

Younger students do well with more rest, more encouragement, and less pressure. They will work themselves until they wilt if they are laughing and conversely, there’s little you can do to make them push harder if they’re not. Larry Kaplan has been an incredible mentor in this respect. Playing ‘ocean, wave, shore’ with his middle school classes, I watched him ignite a frenzy of physical activity with a simple game. There was no shouting, no frowning, and no motivational speeches necessary. But at the end of 20 minutes, every single fifth grader, no matter whether they considered themselves an athlete or not, would file down to the water fountain, flushed and exhausted, having just raced around the gym at top speed. And, miracle of miracles, they’d be smiling. And asking to play again.

Similarly, I’ve realized that there are diminishing returns to my own hard work and long hours. At a certain point, ceding a little bit of control is helpful if it means having more support; hence my efforts to recruit volunteers and an assistant. Wrestling is a long season and wrestlers – and their families – need a coach who is present but also rested, calm, optimistic. My ability to be a good model wanes when I’m strung out after a season that never ends.

Second, the environment of an independent school has a suspicion of subjecting children to a certain level of challenge. Families expect that their children will be well cared-for, including being protected from discomfort and harm. Families with no history in wrestling or high-level athletics may not immediately appreciate the long-term benefit of their child working hard in the room, past the point of comfort and fun. The ethos of the school is one of experimentation and exposure over commitment. The kind of hard work you see in the wrestling room is wrongly thought to be antithetical to progressivism.

In reality, the satisfaction students get from committing wholeheartedly to one thing and making real, measurable improvement is hugely empowering in a way that’s perfectly aligned with LREI’s mission. There is nothing un-progressive about hard work. On the contrary, it’s empowering for students to see the fruits of their labor – to literally see their bodies get stronger, and to understand that they can be the architect of their own excellence. There are some things you get from a deep, unreasonable, inflexible commitment that you simply can’t get from casually sampling activities that interest you, and letting go of them when they stop being fun. This has been and continues to be a pitch I need to make to families, and to the community of teachers and administrators.

As I draw on this experience and look forward to the next phase of my growth as a professional and learner at LREI, I hope that the following key ideas will serve as guiding points  for my journey:

• I’ll look for ways to capture and share more broadly the work I do that often happens quietly and independently.
• I’ll continue to seek out my “good team?” and work to call others in to join me.
• I’ll endeavor to find the right balance between my fierce dedication to getting the work done and making time for rest and play.
• I’ll continue to align on the idea that challenge and hard work are central to the learning expereince in a progressive school.