Such a proud moment...

Mountain Top Wrestling Club

Last weekend we took the whole family down to Cedar City for the Utah Summer Games. We left early to take in the Manti Temple pageant and visit a friends cabin in Mt. Pleasant. The cabin was awesome, the temple pageant was decent, we were in good company, so it made for an enjoyable experience. We left our friends' cabin at 4:45 a.m. so that we could make it to Cedar City by 8 in the morning. We got outside the gated community only to discover we had a flat tire. Minor inconvenience, Rob and I got it changed in 20 minutes flat. We made it down to SUU where the games were being held, and then the van overheated, but at least we got to our destination first! Rob ran the boys in and got them registered and weighed in, I topped off the engine fluids and changed the baby.

Eventually, we all got to be in the same location. I was a little worried about the boys' ability to compete due to the fact that they hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, but they seemed fine. The first couple of matches the boys had were against one another. We were a bit frustrated by this, as we had not come all this way for the boys to do what they already do at practice. But not as many contestants showed up to the tournament this year, so it was only them and 1 other boy in their weight division, and that boy was in another weight class, so it was really only Jaron and Cade. Cade won all but one of his matches and ended up with a gold and a silver. Jaron lost one more than Cade and ended up with the silver and a bronze. He was not at all happy with that, Rob and I were immensely proud.

I must digress a bit and let you know that the tournament ran for two days and covered 3 different styles of wrestling: Freestyle, Greco-Roman, and Folkstyle. So the boys had 3 different opportunities to medal, depending on how many boys were in their division for each style.

We finished with the first day of competition earlier than expected, due to the low turnout, and headed up to Beaver to our hotel. It was fifty miles away, but still the closest place we could find..Cedar City was booked out due to the games and the Shakespearean Festival. There was a pool and hot tub at the hotel, we enjoyed that immensely! We opted to go to bed rather early because we had to get up and out early again the next morning.

We got to the tourney on time and with no incident. The only problem I saw, was that there were A LOT more kids. Sure enough, there were two additional kids in the boys weight bracket, which meant that someone was going home without a medal. The boys did really well, they only had to wrestle each other once. Cade won his first match ever by pinning his opponent! This was the same kid he had lost to at the State Tourney. I tell ya', it was a thing of beauty! Rob was beaming, and I was so excited and happy for him, that I was almost in tears, the best part was, I got pictures of it!

Although Jaron didn't have any such victory, he did have some spectacular moves that I got pictures of as well. check out that bridge!! That's a thing of beauty!
This day ended with Cade getting another silver, and Jaron, a very disappointed Jaron, was the one who didn't place.

All in all, the trip was a very enjoyable one, and I am sure we will probably repeat it next year! At least next year the boys will be in different brackets and won't have to compete against each other!