2010 World Championships

Coaches Apprentice Program (Day 4)

How Do You Get Better as a Coach?

Ted Schanen teaches and coaches wrestling on the western slope of the Rockies in Cedaredge, Colorado (population 1,854 in the 2000 US Census).  He’s the youngest coach on the CAP tour.  When Ted learned he was going to be part of the tour to Moscow, he looked online and saw that there were various training camps for the Worlds that were being held this past summer at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, a 5 ½ hour drive over the mountains from where he lives.  He e-mailed the OTC coaches asking if he could come to the first of the camps – Ted couldn’t make the August camp because his wife was scheduled to give birth that month (it’s a boy!).  Terry Steiner, the National Women’s Freestyle Head Coach, e-mailed him right back and invited him. 

Ted spent about a week at the OTC.  Terry had him in the practice room, watching how the world-class athletes were being put through their paces, talking about what he and Izzy Izboinikov, the Women’s Freestyle Resident Coach, had the women working on in preparation for the Worlds, and why.  Ted explained some of the challenges he had in his high school wrestling program as he tried to make it better and Terry offered advice while also staying after practice to work with Ted on technique, drills, and coaching in general.

This happened a month or so before Ted’s wife gave birth.   His wife spent part of the time in Colorado Springs with Ted because he drove back home to pick her up for their anniversary.  They stayed in a cabin in Colorado Springs because she needed a bed, being so far along.  The rest of the week while he worked to become a better coach Ted slept in his van in a park. 

He knows the answer to the question ‘how do you get better as a coach?’

Tomorrow Ted will spend the day with Terry to watch how he implements at the Worlds what he taught at the OTC. 

The beauty of the CAP program that Cody Bickley is building at USAW is that it brings coaches like Ted and Terry together to make wrestling in the USA better.

The CAP Experience Gets Even Better

Today Cody split us up to enhance the learning experience.  Matt Oney, Matt Hampton, and I were with the women’s freestyle team to scout probable next round opponents for Alyssa Lampe at 48kg and Jessica Medina at 51kg.  Others went with Bill Zadick and the men’s freestyle team.  Still others manned the cameras.  We switch around again tomorrow.

The warm up area has 4 TVs, one dedicated to each competition match, broadcasting each match from the main arena.  Matt Oney and I sat for several hours on one of the four inexplicably low rough wooden benches that sit in front of the monitors trying to pass themselves off as seating.  We took scouting notes about lead legs, offensive attacks from neutral, defensive tendencies, and par terre O & D.  Our butts hurt from the narrow, 12” high benches.  Our legs hurt.  Our backs hurt.  But as good wrestlers, we took the pain, knowing that what we were doing was potentially valuable for Alyssa and Jessica as they advanced through the bracket.  Unfortunately, none of it mattered because both ladies lost earlier than expected and were not pulled through repechage before either of them met the opponents we scouted.

At dinner the CAP coaches sat with Zeke Jones, the National Freestyle Head Coach, and Bill Zadick, the Freestyle Resident Coordinator.  You get special insights about the Worlds and about wrestling in general just by talking casually over a bad meal (the house specialty) about the competition and the team’s preparation and readiness.

No Spell Check in Unofficial Souvenirs

During a lull in the action Matt Oney and I browsed the booths that were set up outside the arena to sell unofficial tournament t-shirts and other gear.  The t-shirts looked to be of better quality and more creative design than the relatively plain vanilla, official shirt sold in the arena.  I’m not a t-shirt guy so I bought socks, of all things, that have a red GR wrestler lifting his blue opponent with a reverse gut wrench and the words “World Championship, Moscow 2010” embroidered on the upper part.  Caveat Emptor.

When we got back to the room, we realized that my socks actually have “World Chamioship” embroidered on the upper.  I can’t even buy a championship.

Late Night Fun For Someone

There are guards dressed in plain black suits, white shirts, and narrow black ties posted in the lobby at the bottom of the each of the four banks of elevators.  Think Men in Black or Jake & Elwood Blues without sunglasses or fedoras.  The guards make you show your room card in order to go up the elevator. 

After dinner I headed to my room alone.  The guard made me show my room card just after he let a lady pass who wore a blood-orange tulip dress so tight that she had to take short delicate steps in her matching colored, ankle high, 4 ½ inch, spiked heels with a delicate gold chain attached in such a way that it swung with each delicate step and glittered, drawing your eyes down the extra-long length fishnet stocking, also blood-orange.  Not that the chain had to work very hard for that to happen.

When we got to the bank of elevators that go to the highest floors, Tatiana Padilla was already waiting.  Tatiana had on her sweat pants and a t-shirt.  Tatiana is the USA’s talented 55kg/121 lbs. wrestler.  She earned a Bronze at the Worlds in 2008.  Earlier today she had made weight and gotten her draw for tomorrow. 

Tatiana looked over when the lady walked over to press the elevator button.  Then she looked away, too polite to stare even though everything about the lady screamed, “Look at me!”  The lobby walls are floor-to-ceiling mirrors.  Being only half polite, I stared at the mirror.

Then the elevator chimed and before the doors opened there was moment of indecision about whether to wait for the next one.  What if I pushed the button for the same floor?  I think Tatiana had a similar thought because both of us were late in our first moves to the elevator.  Another man hurried in behind us, taking the corner of the elevator with the best view of all things blood-orange.  We all pushed separate buttons.  We rode up, two of us with eyes down to keep from smiling inappropriately. 

The first stop was at the floor of someone for whom the night was just starting.

The rest of us got off on our separate floors without commenting about the elevator guard’s diligence in checking room cards.

Las Moscow

For years USAW held the US Nationals in Las Vegas.  But in all those years no one on the Las Vegas Sports Committee in the City That Never Sleeps seems to have ever thought that having eight scantily clad dancing girls, hip thrusting in hot pants (or less), waving flags, shaking pom-poms, and dramatically tossing just-woke-up hair to reveal pouting lips and suggestive eyes would improve the normally staid awards ceremony where medals are formally hung by dignitaries in dark suits around the necks of the top finishers and everyone in the arena stands as the Gold Medalist’s national anthem is played and his or her country’s flag is raised. 

The event planners for the 2010 World Championships in Moscow were not so narrow in their thinking about the emotive possibilities of an awards ceremony.  Vegas, move over.  We’ve had nine different dance numbers in nine different outfits (make that 4 ½ outfits because they don’t use enough material for full credit), each enhanced by the giant video screen that allows for close ups at 10 times normal size.  Eleven more ceremonies to go.

The Wrestling

Others write about the real reason we are here – the wrestling – so I don’t in any detail.  But it is a fan’s heaven to watch hours and hours of the best wrestling in the world and to still have four more days of the same.