I would like to share this story from Eli Murray, a wrestler from Lake Norman high school (NC). Recently, Eli had the privilege of attending the world team camp at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he was able to train with highly skilled wrestlers who made the U20 world team. As an individual with strong connections in the wrestling community, I was able to facilitate this opportunity for Eli, whom I've known since his early days as a wrestler at Combat Athletics. Although I have supported many young wrestlers across North Carolina and beyond, Eli's experience at the training center holds a special place in my heart. Eli even took the time to write about his experience, which you can read below.
From Eli Murray
What I Learned From My Trip to the OTC
In preparing for my trip to Colorado Springs to train at the Olympic Training Center I packed clothes, shoes, toiletries and supplies like I have for what feels like hundreds of other wrestling trips. One of my coaches from the Queens RTC in Charlotte and also for my Fargo trip reminded me to take notes, so this time I also packed notebooks, pens, and highlighters. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting to learn. I hoped to learn some techniques to improve my Par Terre defense, some new transitions to a lace maybe. At Southeast regionals I was tied up 12-12 with criteria with under a minute to go in the semi’s when I gave up trap arm and got rolled over and over and over and over. So any magic or wizardry to get out of a trap arm was high on my wish list of things to learn for this visit. I ended up taking allot more away from my experience than just the notes I wrote down after each practice.
I started wrestling when I was about 5 and I’ve heard all the cliches, seen the funny T-shirts and read all the memes about wrestling in the 13 years I’ve been living this sport. One of the most common things I’ve heard growing up is that wrestling will prepare you for life. Wrestling has definitely shaped me into the man I am today. I have always realized the mental toughness it builds, the confidence it has instilled in me, along with the respectfulness for myself and others. I have always thought this is great, I’ll need all of those things when I grow up, wrestling is great. This week I realized another aspect of what wrestling is teaching me and how it is enabling me for success.
I’m not even sure how my trip to the OTC started exactly. My dad talks to everyone, especially if he has a chance to talk about his boys and wrestling. So I’m sure my dad was having a wrestling conversation like I have seen him have hundreds of times. Ryan Hayes, aka "Freight Train" or to some the "CrankMat" guy was talking to my dad and asking how it was going for me looking at colleges and what my plans were for the summer. I had run into Ryan a few times during season and he had told me to let him know If I needed any help or if he could do anything to help me with colleges. Really Ryan was just asking my dad again how he could help.
That night my dad started showing me some messages from Ryan messaging some important people in the wrestling community to help me train for Fargo. Within a few hours he had coaches reaching out to get me down to train with them and make some connections to work with some of their guys. I had seen the messages Ryan had sent to the coaches at the OTC and I was honored and humbled to have him do that for me.
One of the biggest take aways from this week for me was that to be successful it sure helps to have connections, in wrestling and in life. To network, to spread out in your community and be willing to take the help when it’s offered. This was one of the things I didn’t realize I was learning over the years when I had been told wrestling will prepare me for life. I have known Ryan since I was little, lately he’s been up north or away from wrestling in North Carolina so it’s not like I had seen him allot lately and out of the blue that relationship helped me get a chance to train with some of the best men and women in the country.
My advice after this week about what I learned would be to value the relationships you build in and out of the sport. It’s those relationships and how you treat them that may come back some day and open some doors for you. You still have to do the work and earn your place once those doors are opened but having even one door opened for you can make all the difference. So take the time to build relationships with the people around you, expect nothing, and put as much respect in as you would want to get back and maybe one of those will come back in a meaningful way.
I have also heard the saying that once you wrestle everything else in life is easy. While I understand the sentiment behind it that’s not exactly true or a complete statement. Some things are still hard. Harder than I could have ever imagined. During covid I lost a teammate, an amazing friend, my brothers best friend.
We lost a wrestler, friend and teammate to mental health. Nothing I have ever done on the mat compares to how hard that was and still is. Wrestling is hard and I’m sure it helped prepare me but nothing could ever make that easy. It’s still not easy, writing this now I don’t even know how to refer to Anthony so you know who I am talking about, it’s not easy. Anthony’s family has started an organization around the cause of raising awareness around mental health called Combat for Connection. We went out to Colorado with a few shirts and asked James Green if it would be ok to give him and the coaches one to help spread the message. Not only was he happy to wear a shirt with honor and to spread the message but he invited my dad to come speak to the camp, tell Anthony’s story and spread his family’s message.
Because of a conversation my dad had with Ryan and my connection with Ryan, we were handing out shirts and taking pictures with world team members, olympians, teammates, and some of the greatest wrestlers I’ve had the opportunity to train with while getting to talk about my friend and teammate. Because of a connection I have I was now getting to talk about an organization trying to spread the message of connection, Combat for Connection, whose purpose is to save lives. To step back and really be able to see that building relationships and connections has the ability to grow and even save lives was so much more than I expected to learn.
Not only did the relationship I had with Ryan get me out to Colorado it was now spreading out and building new ones. It enabled me to spread a message bigger than wrestling itself, who knows where that message may end up and who it may help. Hopefully it continues on and new relationships form, new connections are built and keeps growing into bigger and better on and off the mat.
What I learned: be kind, value your relationships, take time to get to know the people around you, be your authentic self in the conversations you have and be the kind of person others would want to have a connection with.
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