“Bringing God Into Sport”
For this week, I really wanted to dive deep into some potential role models that use the platform of sports to glorify the Lord! Once again, I zoned in on the sport of wrestling, as it is my main focus.
I really took some time to dig into the FCA Wrestling website. For quite some time, I have always known about this website, but finally after dedicating some time to explore it, I found a large amount of quality material that could fit into my Independent Learning Project! Here is a link to the website if anyone has any interest!
Like I mentioned before, I was aspiring to find some inspirational athletes and some of their stories. The FCA Wrestling page provides a substantial amount of short videos of specific wrestlers and their testimonies!
Shamelessly, I spent at least an hour watching video upon video of a score of different wrestlers, both past and present! They were truly inspiring and encourage me to not only wrestle with their perspectives, but to live life this way as well! The wisdom supplied within these clips will not only help me on the mat currently, but also in the future for when I become a wrestling coach!
Some of my favorite testimonies included those from Jordan Burroughs, Tom Brands, Tervel Dlagnev, and Bill Zadick. It also happens that these gentlemen, along with several other wrestlers, play major roles in the face of the USA Wrestling Team! Is this a coincidence? I would definitely like to think that it isn’t!
Here is a video of Jordan Burroughs’s brief testimony! He is not only one of the best wrestlers on the face of this planet, but also one of the greatest in USA Wrestling history!
Kyle Snyder is another widely known name in the wrestling world. Even though his list of awards is extremely extensive, I will narrow it down to a brief list. Mr. Snyder was a three-time high school state champion (did not compete his senior season to train for international competition), three-time NCAA Division I champion, three-time World Champion in freestyle, and an Olympic Gold Medalist!
Most recently, in his last World Championships, Snyder suffered a quick loss in the finals. It was not the particular loss that caught the media’s eye, rather his post-match interview. Despite his shortcoming, he still displayed words of gratitude, humility, peace, resolve, respect, wisdom, identity, and not to mention the solid foundation he has in his faith in the Lord, Jesus Christ! Here is another video of this inspiring post-match interview!
All in all, my time spent researching, developing, and answering questions on my topic proved to be exceptionally enlightening! What wrestlers are involved in these concepts, how they incorporate their beliefs through practice and competition, and how they live their lives all got answered throughout the course of this week’s assignment! Not to mention how much inspiration I found in the videos that I looked into!
There are still a few questions that surface that I would really like to dig into throughout the entirety of this project. What specific ways can I implement these ideas into my training and competition? Do I want to include these perspectives into my future career in coaching and teaching? If so, how deep do I want to go into it? Or is there a whole other calling on my life that might include the FCA Wrestling program?
Truthfully, I cannot wait to dissect these questions and progress further into this project!
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