As you’ve probably gathered, our family is comprised of a bunch of achievers. My wife and I both have graduate degrees. We’ve both competed on many sports teams throughout our lives. We work hard, and we believe that we can achieve anything we set our minds to.

Over the years, we’ve passed that work ethic and belief on to our kids. They set goals for themselves all the time. From an early age, we’ve worked with them to set achievable goals, but also goals that cause them to stretch. If the ultimate goal seems too difficult, we work with them to set interim milestones. It’s the whole idea of you want to succeed along the way, but not too easily. Frankly, my kids shoot for the stars more than I’m comfortable with sometimes. But in each case, they have hit the stars and then set loftier goals. That really motivates me to rethink my goal-setting.

Case in point. My oldest son is in his fourth year of High School wrestling. For two years, he was in a very difficult weight class, filled with State Placers and very strong competitors. He was really disappointed that he wasn’t on the varsity team his first two years. He worked hard. He did all the right things, but each time a challenge match arose, he didn’t quite beat the other guy. This led to some disappointment, but to his credit, he set a new goal and started to work towards it.

Last year, he began to really come into his own. He was elected captain of the wrestling team with two other great kids. He was dominant in his weight class in his team’s wrestling room, and at the midpoint of the season really started to improve. Up until that point, he was a .500 wrestler with 17-17 record. He had wrestled some of the toughest competition in the State, and even from neighboring states, so the record was nothing to be disappointed in, but it was pretty pedestrian.

From that point onward, he really started to take off. He qualified for the State Wrestling meet, and he did really well there. While he didn’t make it onto the podium as one of the top eight wrestlers, he forced every one of his opponents to really work for their wins.

At that point, he started to think about his goals for the 2013-2014 season. One of the highest honors for his team is the Black Shirt award. This is a very exclusive award with really difficult criteria:

• Score 75 takedowns in one season
• Record 18 falls, tech falls, or a combination of both in one season
• Be a four time state qualifier
• Be a two time state placer
• Be a State Champion

If you know anything about wrestling, then you’ll understand. If you don’t know wrestling, let’s just say that those achievements are tough to attain. Since 1995 there have been 33 wrestlers at our High School who have been inducted into the club. Since we have roughly 40 wrestlers on the team per year, that means about 4% of the wrestlers have become Black Shirts.

When he stated, on the last day of the State Tournament that he wanted to earn a Black Shirt next season, I took pause. Don’t get me wrong. My son is a stud. He’s more mentally and physically sound than almost anybody I know. He’s willing to put in work like nobody else. He doesn’t have an off-switch. He doesn’t know what a 75% practice day is. He goes at 100% all the time. And I mean all the time. There is never an off-season for him.

But the Black Shirt club? In the back of my mind, I wondered whether he really was up to the task of being in the top 4% of all the wrestlers who have been through that wrestling room. He’d already missed out on the state qualifier and two-time state placer criteria. That left takedowns, falls, and State Champion as the remaining options. To become a State Champion your season doesn’t really matter all that much. All that matters are two weekends at the end of February where you wrestle in Regionals and at State. Everything has to go perfectly to become a State Champion. More importantly, if he had to rely on that criteria, his black shirt wouldn’t be earned until after the season concluded, on the very last day possible.

Thankfully, I kept all this to myself, but I started to strategize on how I was going to help him set interim goals, and possibly a more achievable final goal. I didn’t want him to fail, and in my blind-spot I didn’t see that setting big goals means taking big risks. It means working harder than ever before. It means sacrifice every single day. It means eating right all the time, not just 98% of the time. It means getting enough rest. It means sacrificing time with friends and family. It means setting something out there that is bigger than yourself and going after it.

In my desire to see him achieve, I doubted his ability to achieve. I doubted his ability to focus…to get the job done.

This weekend, he proved me wrong. He proved that my doubts were unfounded. He showed me that when you set a goal, believe in yourself, and work towards that goal…anything is possible.

And it came about after a failure…of sorts.

In wrestling, as in many other sports, the competitors compete in a bracket-style format. Two wrestlers wrestle, then the winners wrestle each other, and the losers get a second opportunity on the backside in the consolation bracket. In our ultracompetitive family, when you end up in the consolation side things seem kind of bleak. The best you can do is place third overall. You don’t even get a chance to beat the kid who was lucky (or skilled) enough to have his only loss in the finals match. You can go 4-1, 6-1, 8-1 on the day…and yet your third. You get a bronze medal. Just a bronze.

We talk, as a family, about how there are lots and lots of kids who would kill for the chance to compete in the bronze medal match. Heck, at the most recent tournament, there were 22 kids in the wrestling bracket, and 19 went home with no medal at all. But we strive for the gold medals. It’s our expectation, and because our family has done well in competition, we have buckets full of those medals. I’m not joking, we have boxes and boxes full of medals. Not all of them are gold, but we have so many that we don’t have enough places to store them. But the least favorite are the bronze medals.

My son had a great first two matches. He got pins in both, against pretty good wrestlers. He had also gotten a pin the prior Thursday at our Senior Night home dual match. That put his total of pins and tech falls (a win by 15 or more points) to 15. His next opponent was a kid that he’d wrestled against since he was six. A tough opponent, but certainly beatable. Two more pins were possible for this tournament, which would put his season total to 17, one shy of his Black Shirt goal.

I have to sheepishly admit that until he pinned the first two kids earlier in the day, I didn’t really believe that he was going to earn that Black Shirt. I still clung to the belief that something might happen. An injury. A series of crazy tough wrestlers, that although beaten, wouldn’t be pinned. I envisioned being at the State Tournament and having to bank on winning the entire thing because the pins just didn’t happen.

OK, so I’m an idiot. Fortunately, he not only proved that to me, but he made me laugh about it.

The Semifinal match began, and from the start my son wrestled a bit tentatively. If you know him, you’ll say “What?!?!”. That’s not a word we use to describe his wrestling. His nickname is Psycho. He’s known for his physical style of wrestling. He’s 170 pounds of pure speed, strength, and grit. He’s unconventional. He’s fast. Honestly, there are lots of kids who hate wrestling with him, because he gives not quarter. And wrestlers aren’t known for being soft. If you wrestle, you’re one of the toughest people on the planet.

But in this match, he was tentative. The match was still close at the end, but the opportunity to win slipped away, and he lost 5-8. The Gold and Silver medals melted away.

He congratulated his opponent, and shook hands with the other coaches. He’s a great sportsman, and he congratulated his opponent again and told him to go on and win the gold. Then he left and mat and spent some time in alone thinking about his match. It’s just his style, so nothing out of the ordinary.

When he returned to our crash area from the showers he was all smiles. That was somewhat out of character, since he doesn’t like to lose. Ever. But he was being his usual grinning self…the kid we all know away from the competitive arena. Finally one of the parents said, “What are you grinning about?”. He looked up with his big eyes and silly grin and said, “If I’d beaten B. and then won Gold I still couldn’t have gotten my Black Shirt. Tomorrow I’ll have four victims that I can pin…and I’ll own my Black Shirt.”

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. Here was a kid who had failed. He’d lost. He couldn’t get the coveted Gold Medal from the tournament. He wouldn’t be introduced for a finals match, with the lights turned off, the music blaring, and a spot light shining on him. He was going to have to wrestle three times just to get the chance to even earn a Bronze medal. Then he would have to win that match. And the competition at this tournament was tough. Joining him on the consolation side of the bracket were five state placers from the prior year, two of them two-time state placers. The road that was before him was no cakewalk. It was a rough and tumble road with lots of dangers.

And what did he see…the opportunity to beat four kids, and at least three of them by pin.

Talk about singular focus for a goal!

As a group, the other wrestlers and parents joked around with him. We caught his intensity and focus and turned it into something cool. The coaches returned from the next couple of matches to the crash area and joined in with our discussion of the likelihood that Psycho could actually attain a Black Shirt as well as win a Bronze medal.

And the funny thing about all this: The next day he went out and pinned the next two kids. Then he had a close 4-3 win over an excellent wrestler. This setup the 3rd place match against a kid he’s wrestled for years. They are so close that it’s anybody’s guess as to who will win. They usually battle until the waning seconds of the match and one of them scores the winning point. The other wrestler’s Dad and I then shake hands while shaking our heads that our boys are so tough, so closely matched in skills, and wrestle each other so often.

But on that day, there was a Black Shirt hanging in a closet with my son’s name ready to be emblazoned on it. In the middle of the second period, my son had an awesome combination of moves that culminated in a pinning combination. He got his 18th pin/tech fall and earned a Hutchinson High School Wrestling Black Shirt. He became the 34th member of that exclusive club.

To cap all that off…he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat on the podium in the 3rd place spot. As usual, he had everybody on the podium cracking up. Every other weight class’ pictures are full of solemn, tough-looking wrestlers. They all look like somebody you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley. But the 170’s are always grinning and looking like happy kids…at least the majority of them are. And the happiest one that day…my Black Shirt!