Junior Worlds 2018 - Blog #7

That's a wrap for the US women's team at Junior Worlds in Slovakia.  Macey's silver, secured on Wednesday night after the semi-finals, is the only piece of hardware the women will bring back to the States.  

Tonight, Ali finished her week in 5th place.  She just didn't have enough in the tank to gather that bronze medal.  She came off the mat exhausted and said her entire body hurt.  I believed her.  It looked that way.  The combination of weight management, a two day event, an emotional setback the night before, the intense heat in the venue, travel back-and-forth to the hotel and we just couldn’t pull things together.  She was in great spirits and fought like crazy, but her legs, most of all, just didn’t respond.  It wasn’t an issue of mental toughness like it usually is for an athlete in her situation.  She left it all on the mat and was physically exhausted. 

So, we need to go back to the drawing board and look at how we prepared.  No excuses, just accountability and responsibility.  Don’t get me wrong, both of them gave everything they had and should have no regrets concerning their effort.  We can take this an opportunity to learn and look deeply at all things leading into the event.  A day ago, it looked like our preparation process was on point and Macey and Ali wrestled extremely well.  But that was on day one of the tournament.  Day two was a different story for both of them.  At this level, if teammates who train in the same environment respond the same way, it’s likely a product of that environment and I need to re-evaluate our physical preparation. 

You don’t know what you don’t know, so now that we have intel on our junior worlds experience, I need to make some important adjustments.  I think that’s how you learn from moments like these.

We’ll have a 10-hour flight back to the United States and that will give us time for some needed reflection and evaluation.  Win or lose, though, deep reflection would have been on the schedule any ways.  We must always be as critical in our assessments of  both "success" and of "failure."  Our posture really should be the same no matter the outcome because we want to keep moving forward in our progress.  

We all know the value of getting back up after getting knocked down.  It’s one of the biggest reasons successful athletes succeed.  Every once in a while, though, when you get knocked down, you need to stay down for a bit so you know exactly why you got knocked down.  When you finally do get back up, you do so planning on not getting knocked down again.