By: Ian Patt

            Most of you, my online friends, have heard about the recent fine which has been unfairly levied against my program. Do any of you really know the backstory though? I mean really know it? You can’t trust what you read on the message boards. You just can’t.

I had a guy tell me the only difference between a heroin addict and a wrestling coach is that the wrestling coach has no clue when and where they’ll get their next high. He told me this while a McNab Collie gnawed on an old basketball in the back of his flatbed. James Dean Rader, his name was, and chuckling to himself, he added that every wrestling coach ought to have a dog trained up to chew basketballs.

J.D. was quite clever.

Quite wise.

I’m an admitted copy-cat coach, and have made a practice of studying and repeating his practices, his advice.

            If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t competin.

J.D. had this printed on the back of his team’s warm up hoodies last winter. Another stroke of genius. None of his rivals ever found the truth they wanted behind those words. Was The Black Buffalo (a name commonly ascribed to this learned leader of athletes) for real? Was he putting one over on us all?

The sheer paranoia inflicted from one degenerate sentence on the back of 25 hoodies, give or take, was really something.

            A handful of my fellow small school coaches in the great state of Oregon made ridiculous hospitality room bets concerning J.D.’s athletes and their suspected steroid use. I mean, a few of his wrestlers appeared jacked in an unnatural sort of way . . . but was that steroids, or the private school privilege of being able to recruit promising athletes?

 Well, many a high school wrestling junky has put far too much stock in the content on message boards, but such was not the case when I chimed in regarding J.D. and his Cross Ridge Christian Buffaloes. Monsters, I wrote. Cross Ridge’s lineup is replete with actual monsters.

So, maybe that was a slight exaggeration.

Still, none of my fellows on the message boards bought this minorly hyperbolized version of the truth, even with their preexisting paranoia over Cross Ridge Christian.

See what happens when you legalize marijuana? wrote one. Portland idiots get to smoking and making up nonsense about OUR wrestling scene, which WE’RE supposed to read and trust? Go piss up a rope.

Joke’s on them. I don’t smoke marijuana. I eat edibles – in the ballpark of 100 milligrams per day. Some (my mom in particular) say it’s a horrible vice, but I think the habit allows me to keep a level head.

Helps me see things clearly.

Things like monsters on a high school wrestling team!

Egads!

If you can’t beat him, join him.

That’s what my mom advised. She was the first woman to win a state title in Oregon high school wrestling, in a boys bracket, no less. So I took her word for it and approached J.D. about coaching opportunities. He offered those lines about heroin addiction, basketball chewing pups, etc., then turned me down upon learning I had never placed in the 2A/1A state tourney.

The fool!

I made the bloodround my senior year, had one of his Buffalo bastards dead to rights in a cradle before the guy sank his teeth into my right nut. Lost the nut a week later, and more importantly, the match, which I guess would have provided me the credentials needed to coach wrestling on The Black Buffalo’s staff.

Thus, I did what any man who can’t join them would: I got back to trying to beat them.

Only this time, on my terms.

The first thing was to see J.D.’s Buffalo herd for what they were. To recognize a vampire, two werewolves, and an ogre for what they were, and gameplan accordingly.

Easier said than done when you’ve got Stephanie Meyer and company making a mess of your folkloric vampire. Consider the Clayton 106 pounder. Sure, I developed suspicions upon learning he was an exchange student from some Eastern European country. But his obsessive application of sunscreen, indoors?

Should’ve been a dead give.

Only, when the authorities have led you to believe a vampire will either incinerate or turn sparkly in light, you miss the real, obvious stuff. I digress. Upon witnessing the lad eat a bloody steak following a weigh in, I knew for sure what he was. 

Then you had the werewolves. Out of 140 head coaches in our state, I seem to be the only one who noticed these lads (a 144 pounder and a 165) wrestled better at night than in the morning; that they jumped levels whenever a full moon lined up with a weekend tournament. These are things you can only put together whilst adhering to a strict drug regimen, as I do, I guess.

J.D. once told me you have to know your enemy to defeat them. This is true, only, no mortal high school kid who knows his enemy is a monster will want to defeat them. With the exception of Lucas Nelson, of course.

Lucas Nelson is a large lad. He had to cut thirty some odd pounds just to make heavyweight.

In Lucas’ freshman year, I put him through the prison routine, which involves finding the scariest looking guy (ideally with tattoos) in a naive child’s bracket and concocting a story about this character being recently released (or recently escaped, if the kid is really naive) from prison for voluntary manslaughter.

Lucas did not bat an eye at my prison routine. Didn’t break a sweat. He is a true knuckledragger, and toed the line against a supposed murderer with no fear in his heart.

During the practice before we faced Cross Ridge, I pulled Lucas aside.

Lucas, I said, you will be wrestling an ogre in tomorrow night’s dual. He is a large stupid brute. Highly arrogant, as his kind usually are. Do not be friendly to him. Do not be aggressive. Stall like your life depends upon it. Run circles around the bastard. Get him dizzy, and when he’s at his breaking point, tie up your headlock and rip his noggin off.

Lucas nodded and grinned. Seemed to understand the assignment. His teammates? Not so much.

You want me to intentionally give myself a bloody nose? my 106 asked.

Yeah, I said, and left it at that, because telling the lad he was wrestling a vampire was simply not an option.

Our 144 also pushed back on my gameplan. He said, I don’t think a ref is going to let me bring a ball onto the mat, coach . . .

Crap! I said. You’re so right. Pack a ball in your bag anyway – oh I don’t care, any ball will do.

So we had plans in place for the werewolves, the vampire, the ogre. The rest of the Black Buffalo’s squad, however, the humans – they were still a problem. I mean, most of my team are wanna-be pumpkin-pushers cut from basketball. They get smoked by .500 wrestlers, and you don’t survive a season at Cross Ridge if you’re a .500 wrestler . . .

Listen, men, I said at the end of practice. Hate’s a strong word and all, but I hate Cross Ridge Christian. I would never, ever, even think about joining them—

Why not? asked my freshman 175.

You really want to know?

Yes, the team replied in unison.

They took my right nut. One of their guys squashed it with his teeth during my last high school match. Ever since, I’ve made it my life mission to disgrace the Buffalos in a wrestling contest. Fifteen times now I’ve tried. Fifteen times I’ve failed. But the sixteenth time?

Will go like the last fifteen? said the freshman 175.

As if! I said.

As if it was that simple.

Listen, I said. You know how most wrestling coaches tell their kids not to try junk moves? Head and arms? Lat drops? Suicide cradles? Cement mixers? The high risk, high reward stuff?

Yes, the team said.

Tomorrow, that’s all we’re going for. Pin or get pinned, that’s the motto.

The dual meet began.

I should back up. The dual meet began after a disastrous warmup.

My wrestlers stormed the mat like great men before them stormed the beaches of Normandy, only to AC/DC (rather than heavy fire from Charlie), gym lights off, spotlight on. They sprinted half a lap around the mat, then ate crap.

All of them went down, simultaneously. Piled up like sardines.

Turns out, I put a little too much disinfectant spray down ten minutes prior, and didn’t mop well enough to avoid slippage.

Whoops.

But here came the national anthem, sung mostly on key by one of the choir kids. And then the 106 pound match.

Opportunity knocked. 

I had my guy Jerry, the janitor, rig up an extra strength LED situation for our spotlight. Early on, you could tell the vampire was feeling it. Scratching himself constantly. Squinting up and hissing at the light.

Still, after an uneventful first period, he chose top and commenced to abuse our 106.

I mean, he was beating our guy bad.

Practically ripping my small man’s arms off and beating him upside the head with them.

I yelled from the corner.

Nose!

Do it!

Nose now! 

My 106 shook his head.

Reasonable response, I guess.

I, an admittedly unreasonable man, leaned over to my assistant.

I need you to punch me in the face, I said.

What? he said.

Subtly, so nobody notices.

My assistant, like my 106, refused.

So I hit myself in the nose, only, the dang thing wouldn’t bleed.

Next I tried pulling out my pocket knife.

Thanks J.D.

Always have your pocket knife handy, he once told me, and here I was, accidentally opening and cutting my palm open with one.

The Cross Ridge vampire reacted to fresh blood immediately. Nostrils up, frantic look in the eye. In his distracted state, he never saw our guy coming with a junk move.

A flying squirrel!

Our guy somersaulted over the vampire, mat returned him straight to his back, stuck him.

The entire gym, all twenty some odd home fans, erupted. A brief moment of pride for a job well done . . .

The next couple matches did not go our way. Don’t worry, I told my assistant coach after the 138 pound match. We had the werewolves coming up, and I knew how to handle them.

Oh yes I did.

144 started, and our guy was getting beat like a drum.

I’m worried, my assistant said.

Quit being a Negative Nancy, I said.

He ignored me, and continued looking on with worry, while I procured a fistfull of bouncy balls from our med kit.

Watch, I said, tossing the balls toward our bench. They bounced this way and that, scattering like so much wind.

This induced the precise reaction I was hoping for. Our opponent, being half wolf, is much like a dog, and if there’s one thing I learned from J.D. about dogs, it’s that they will forget the task at hand in favor of a ball in motion, every time.

The Cross Ridge werewolf just about broke his neck, I have to figure, whipping it back and forth as my grenade of bouncing chaos exploded around the gym.

            Just when I thought we had our man distracted and ready for defeat, however, J.D. made his move.

Go figure.

The Black Buffalo pulled out a whistle, which I couldn’t hear, cause I’m not a dog, but boy did his wrestler respond to each inaudible tweet. One second, the beast would be bouncing his head to the beat of a stray ball, the next he’d hear that whistle blow and straighten up.

            We lost.

That match, and all the others leading up to heavyweight.

            The scene was getting ugly.

            I pulled Lucas aside.

            Lucas, I said. Remember the game plan?

            Game plan? said Lucas.

            Did I already mention this young man, silly ol’ Lucas, was a knuckledragger? You can lead a horse to water, but that does not mean you can make your horse tap dance . . .

            The ref blew the whistle, a regular one, the heavyweight match started, and Lucas threw all my prematch advice out the window.

            He did not stall.

            Nor did he circle.

            Instead, Lucas stomped his big feet forward, jacked up an underhook, and dropped the ogre like a sack of taters. Bam! Straight to his back.

            The ref smacked the mat.

            Our crowd of fifteen were mostly gone by this time, so there wasn’t much of a celebration from the stands.

            Our bench though?

            They went nuts! Lucas tossed his headgear, and since the NCAA has a stupid rule about that, I guess the dang zebra felt the need to deduct us – a high school team – one single team point. Which meant we got a letter from the OSAA, and a fine our program cannot afford to pay.

            So here I am, starting up a go fund me. Because we’re not just looking at a fine here. That dang ogre got pissed off and tore up a corner of our mat, which is going to need some expensive repair work . . . If you care about integrity in high school athletics, or sticking it to the bully, please consider a small donation of $100-1,000. And if you can’t donate, please like and share this post to spread the word.

            Sincerely,
            Ronald Burns
            OHS Wrestling Coach

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Ian Patt (he/him) is a writer and educator living in Southern Oregon. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sheepshead Review, Eunoia Review, Flash Phantoms, and Every Day Fiction. When he’s not writing, he teaches English and coaches sports at a local high school.