09/02/2026
🏆 CHAMPIONSHIP LESSONS FOR WRESTLING PARENTS 🏆
Our responsibility is bigger than helping our kids win matches. We are using wrestling to prepare them to WIN at LIFE! One of the most important relationships in youth wrestling is the relationship between a parent and their wrestler.
As parents, we all want our kids to succeed. We want to see them win matches, stand on podiums, win championships, and reach their full potential. There is nothing wrong with wanting those things. But our ultimate goal has to be bigger than wrestling.
We are trying to build confident, disciplined, hard-working, resilient young men and women who know how to handle success, failure, pressure, and adversity.
Wrestling is one of the greatest tools we have to teach those lessons. If we want to build championship wrestlers and, more importantly, championship people, these are the principles we need to remember as parents.
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1️⃣ BE THEIR PARENT, NOT THEIR COACH!
Your child already has coaches. What they need from you is something their coaches can never provide: a mom or dad who loves them unconditionally and is their biggest supporter.
When practice or competition is over, resist the temptation to immediately become another coach. They don’t always need another breakdown of what they did wrong, what technique they missed, or what they should have done differently.
Sometimes they simply need their parent to love and encourage them. Ask if they had fun. Tell them you enjoyed watching them compete. Talk about school, friends, dinner, or something completely unrelated to wrestling.
Don’t let wrestling consume your relationship with your child.
There will eventually be a last practice, a last tournament, and a last match. When that day comes, your relationship with your son or daughter should be stronger because of wrestling, not damaged by it.
Your relationship with your child is more important than any wrestling match they will ever win.
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2️⃣ TRUST THE COACHES YOU CHOOSE!
Parents have every right, and a responsibility, to decide who they trust to coach and develop their child.
Ask questions. Learn about the program. Understand the philosophy, culture, and expectations. Decide whether it is the right environment for your wrestler and your family.
But once you choose your coaches, trust them to coach.
If your wrestler hears one message from the coaches and another from Mom or Dad on the ride home, you put them in the middle. That creates confusion and eventually hurts their development.
You will not agree with every decision, and coaches are not perfect. If you have a legitimate question or concern, talk directly with the coach.
Do not complain about the coaches to your wrestler, undermine the coaching staff at home, or make your child decide which voice to follow.
You choose the program. You choose the coaches. Once you make that choice, give them the opportunity to do their job.
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3️⃣ PRAISE EFFORT, ATTITUDE, AND COURAGE MORE THAN RESULTS
Winning matters. We keep score for a reason, and we want our kids to want to win. But winning cannot be the only measurement of success.
Ask questions that focus on what they can control:
• Did you compete hard?
• Were you aggressive?
• Did you give full effort?
• Did you keep wrestling when it got difficult?
• Did you respond the right way when something went wrong?
Winning is ultimately the result of consistently doing the right things over time. Teach your wrestler to become process-focused instead of outcome-focused. Practice hard. Listen to the coaches. Improve your technique. Compete aggressively. Learn from mistakes. Keep showing up. If we consistently execute the right things, the results will eventually take care of themselves.
Sometimes losing can even be a gift. Nobody wants to lose, but a loss early in the season can expose a weakness that can be corrected in practice and ultimately help a wrestler succeed when it matters most.
Wrestlers who are terrified of losing or disappointing their parents will compete tight. They become afraid to take risks because they are afraid to make mistakes that could lead to a loss. Wrestlers who know their parents value their effort, attitude, and courage are much more likely to compete aggressively and freely.
Our job isn’t to remove their desire to win. It’s to remove their fear of losing.
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4️⃣ YOUR WRESTLER FEELS YOUR ENERGY
Your son or daughter is watching you more than you realize. If you are nervous, they will probably feel nervous. If you are furious about a call, they will think something terrible happened. If you are devastated by a loss, they may begin to believe losing is devastating.
But when you are calm, confident, and positive, you communicate something completely different:
“I have seen your hard work. I believe in you. Go compete.”
Before a big match, your wrestler does not need to know an opponent’s record, ranking, see their Trackwrestling Profile, or number of state or national titles.
None of those things change what your wrestler needs to do. Prepare. Trust the training. Wrestle your match. Score points! Be their source of confidence, not another source of pressure.
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5️⃣ FOLLOW THE FIVE-MINUTE RULE
After a tough loss, give your wrestler five minutes.
Do not chase them down. Do not immediately explain what they did wrong. Do not ask, “What were you thinking?” Give them a few minutes to breathe, process what happened, and reset. Remember, they probably care more about that loss than you do.
When they are ready, help them get their mind back on competing. If the tournament is not over, the most important match is now the next one. The technical mistakes can be addressed later by the coaches.
Sometimes the best thing a parent can say is:
“I love you. I am proud of you. Let’s get ready for the next one and go get the next best thing.”
Disappointment is temporary. The response is what matters.
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6️⃣ NEVER MAKE YOUR LOVE FEEL CONDITIONAL ON WINNING
Winning matters, and big accomplishments should be celebrated. When your wrestler wins a state championship, stands on top of the podium, or reaches a goal they have worked incredibly hard to achieve, celebrate that moment with them. They earned it.
But your wrestler also needs to know beyond any doubt that your love and approval are not determined by the scoreboard or their place on the podium. The excitement of winning a championship will naturally be different from the disappointment of going 0-2. But the love, pride, and support your child feels from you should never change. Your reaction to the result may be different, but your relationship with your child should never change.
That does not mean we lower our standards.
We should expect effort, discipline, good sportsmanship, and coachability. We should expect our wrestlers to represent themselves, their family, and their team the right way.
We can be disappointed in a lack of effort, a poor attitude, or bad sportsmanship. But we should never make our children feel like a loss changed their value in our eyes.
Love is unconditional. Standards are not.
When wrestlers understand that distinction, they become willing to take risks. They stop wrestling scared, stop worrying about disappointing Mom or Dad, and stop allowing the fear of failure to control how they compete. They trust their training. They take chances. They wrestle aggressively and freely.
Celebrate the wins. Learn from the losses. Hold them accountable to the standard. But make sure your wrestler always knows that no result will ever change how much you love them or how proud you are to be their parent.
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7️⃣ DON’T RESCUE THEM FROM ADVERSITY
One of the greatest gifts wrestling gives our children is adversity.
Bad calls happen. They will lose matches they believe they should have won. They will have bad practices and disappointing tournaments. They may get injured. They may work incredibly hard and still not get the result they wanted.
Do not immediately try to fix everything for them. Let them experience disappointment. Let them struggle. Let them learn how to respond. You can support your child without rescuing them from every difficult situation.
Eventually, life will give them problems Mom and Dad cannot solve. Wrestling gives them the opportunity to learn that they can get knocked down without staying down.
Let wrestling teach them how to get back up!
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8️⃣ STOP GIVING YOUR WRESTLER EXCUSES
There will always be a reason something is difficult.
Your wrestler may be at the bottom of the age group. They may face someone older, stronger, more experienced, or further along in their development. They may get a difficult draw or wrestle a kid who has already won multiple state or national titles.
All of those things may be true. But do not turn reality into an excuse. When we say, “It’s okay. You are at the bottom of the age group and that kid is a year older,” we think we are protecting our child’s confidence.
What they may actually hear is:
“You were not expected to win.”
Being younger does not change the standard. It changes the challenge. Maybe that means working harder, becoming more technical, improving positions, getting stronger, sharpening offense, or simply putting in more time and repetitions.
That is part of becoming a champion. Instead of saying, “You lost because he is older,” teach them to ask:
“He is older. What do I need to improve so I can beat him anyway?”
A reason explains the challenge. An excuse lowers the expectation.
We are not teaching kids to ignore reality. We are teaching them not to use reality as permission to expect less from themselves. Recognize the challenge. Accept it. Work harder. Improve your skill set. Compete to the best of your ability anyway.
Champions do not need perfect circumstances. They learn to compete in the circumstances they are given.
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9️⃣ DON’T COMPARE YOUR WRESTLER TO OTHER KIDS
Every wrestler develops on a different timeline.
One kid may win everything at eight years old and struggle at fourteen. Another may struggle at ten and become incredible at sixteen. Physical maturity, confidence, skill, and experience all develop differently. Do not compare your child’s journey to someone else’s.
Do not let rankings, social media, brackets, or conversations with other parents convince you that your child is somehow behind.
Compare your wrestler to who they were six months ago, not to somebody else’s kid.
Are they improving? Are they getting mentally tougher? Are they becoming more disciplined? Is their technique getting better? Are they learning from mistakes? Are they becoming a better teammate? Are they still hungry to improve? That is what matters.
Their journey belongs to them.
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🔟 TRUST THE PROCESS
Championship wrestlers are not built in one season.
They are built through thousands of practices, repetitions, mistakes, losses, corrections, and small improvements that almost nobody sees.
Parents naturally want results immediately, but development is not linear. There will be breakthroughs followed by setbacks, sometimes in the same weekend. There will be tournaments where everything clicks and others where nothing seems to work.
Do not panic. Do not constantly change the plan. Trust the coaches. Trust the training. Trust the process. The goal is not to have the best eight-year-old or ten-year-old wrestler. The goal is to help your child discover how good they are capable of becoming.
Development takes time. Give them that time.
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1️⃣1️⃣ TRUST THE JOURNEY
Trusting the process means believing in the work.
Trusting the journey means understanding that even when you do the work, the outcome will not always be what you wanted.
Teach your child that their responsibility is to prepare, work hard, compete fearlessly, and give everything they have. Even when they do everything right, the outcome will not always be what they wanted. That is part of wrestling, and it is part of life.
Sometimes the greatest lessons come from the matches that break our hearts. A loss can expose something that needs improvement. A setback can create motivation. A difficult season can build perseverance. A disappointment can teach humility.
Something that feels devastating today may become an important part of their story years from now. We cannot control every opponent, call, bracket, or outcome. We can control our effort, attitude, preparation, and, most importantly, our response.
Success is not about everything going according to plan. It is about how you respond when it doesn’t.
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1️⃣2️⃣ REMEMBER THE LONG GAME
One day your child will wrestle their final match.
There will be a last practice, a last tournament, a last time putting on the singlet, and a last whistle. The medals will eventually end up in boxes. The brackets will be forgotten. The rankings will no longer matter.
But who wrestling helped them BECOME can last a LIFETIME.
That is the Long Game.
Not every wrestler will become a CHAMPION. Every wrestler can become SUCCESSFUL.
Not every wrestler will win a state championship, become an All-American, or wrestle in college. But every wrestler, regardless of age, experience, natural ability, or athleticism, has the opportunity to be SUCCESSFUL.
We should not define success simply by wins, losses, medals, or championships. SUCCESS is the happiness and satisfaction that comes from knowing you gave your best effort to become the best that you are CAPABLE of becoming.
Success is not about becoming better than somebody else. It is about continually becoming better than you were yesterday.
Potential is not fixed. It changes with age, emotional maturity, skill development, experience, and physical conditioning. A five-year-old wrestling in their first match does not have the same ability as a college athlete competing in their fourth NCAA tournament. But both can be equally successful.
The standard is not whether they perform at the same level. The standard is whether each wrestler performs to the fullest of their own potential. That is why the scoreboard never tells the entire story. A wrestler can win and perform far below their potential. Another wrestler can lose and wrestle the best match of their life.
We want to win. Winning matters. Championships matter. Competition is part of what makes wrestling great.
But the bigger question is:
Did you give everything you had and compete to the best of your ability?
If the answer is no, even if you won, there is work to do.
If the answer is yes, even if you lost, be proud of the effort, learn from the performance, and get back to work.
Success is not always determined by the skill of the wrestler. Many times, it is determined by the will of the wrestler. A successful wrestler works every day to improve. They do not run from challenges. They become excited about the opportunity to overcome them. When something is difficult, they do not immediately look for an excuse.
They ask:
What can I learn? What can I improve? What do I need to do next? Then they keep going.
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⭐ VALUES THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS ⭐
EFFORT (EXTRA): The difference between ordinary and EXTRAORDINARY is that little bit of EXTRA effort!
ATTITUDE (CHOICE): You cannot always control what happens, but you can choose how you respond.
RESILIENCE: Get knocked down. Learn from it. Get back up.
LEADERSHIP: Everyone can lead. Lead through your actions and make the people around you better.
RESPONSIBILITY: Own your choices, preparation, mistakes, and results. Do not make excuses.
CHARACTER: Do what is right, especially when nobody is watching.
CONFIDENCE: Believe in yourself because you prepared, worked, and earned the right to believe.
CONSISTENCY: Excellence is not something you do occasionally. It is a habit built every day.
PERSEVERANCE: When it gets difficult, keep working and finish what you started.
Those values lead to SUCCESS. Success is not determined by whether you are the most talented wrestler in the bracket.
It is determined by whether you are willing to do what it takes to become the best wrestler, and ultimately the best person, you are capable of becoming.
That standard applies on the wrestling mat and throughout life.
That is why not every wrestler will become a champion, but every wrestler can become successful.
As parents, we are not just trying to build wrestlers who can win matches. We are using wrestling to build young men and women who know how to work, compete, lead, take responsibility, overcome adversity, persevere, and pursue their full potential, all qualities that will prepare them to WIN at LIFE!
🏆 THAT’S THE LONG GAME! 🏆
— Nate Blevins MTXE Events
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