Waibel Family: I think we found his calling...

Last week a flyer came home in Eli's backpack from school, about a wrestling camp at the high school for grades K-5. The 4 day wrestling camp only cost $5, and turns out a few of Eli's friends from his soccer team were going so we decided to take Eli as well. All week long he kept asking "is it my night to go fight my friends at the high school yet?" I had to keep reminding him that we dont call it fighting, we call it wrestling. And no, we dont punch durring wrestling, we wrestle. :) So we show up last night at the High School, to a wrestling gym FULL of crazy little boys. Over 125 to be exact, all running around like crazy. It was so hot and sweaty and LOUD in there. They split up the boys by grade, and each grade had about 4 of the high school wrestlers to be their coaches. As you can kind of see in the pictures, there were a lot of kids in one tiny gym and by the end of the night even the parents just watching were sweating, and the High School wrestlers coaching were losing their voices from trying to yell over the rest of the camp to their own groups. After I left, my ears hurt like I had been at a loud concert all night. Eli was very excited to see his buddy from his soccer team, Cooper. Coopers Mom Kim was their soccer coach. Eli and Cooper are very similar in personality, both loving fun and CRAZY. They were often found at soccer practice wrestling on the field with eachother, so it was pretty ironic (not) that that chose eachother when it was time to pair up with someone their size to practice the moves that the coaches had tought them after warm up and stretch time. Coopers mom and I were both pretty excited to see how quickly they caught on to the actual moves in wrestling that they were shown. Some of the other boys just looked like they were dancing with eachother, or there were even the few who sat starring at eachother not sure of what to do. Our boys immediatley got down into position and went to town taking eachother out, the proper wrestling way! I was pretty proud of him.
He loved playing Tball, but the waiting around for his turn and the massive amounts of dirt on a baseball field...he played in the tempting dirt more than he focused on the game. Soccer he's always loved. He's played for 3 years now and looks foward to it alot, but he cant quite grasp the "not sharing" in a soccer game and thinks its mean to steal the ball from others...therefor he just does this silly wander around the field durring games on some days. He loves to wrestle Daddy and be tough. He has since the day he could crawl. He's such a tough kid, Mommy wont allow him to be rough with her because he's so stong I almost always end up hurt. We thought maybe football would be his thing some day taking down all the big guys with his skinny strength, but Im not sure he will let go of his sharring issue for that game, like in soccer. Last night...he proved that wrestling just may be his thing. A few of the adult coaches commented on how good they were and that we have two state champions in the making. I asked him on our way home if he had fun and he said yes. I asked if he wanted to do it more and he said yes. I asked if he liked wrestling more than soccer and he said ALOT MORE. So as long as he still enjoys this, we'll keep doing this over other sports I think. After this camp, were definatley signing him up for the actual team. Were worried that his height might someday hinder him from wrestling (wrestling isnt really known for 6 foot guys..but the Waibels are known for 6 foot tall guys), but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. Until then, we'll let him wrestle his little heart out so he sleeps as hard as he did last night after we got home.