Over Coming Adversity

Authors Note: This is a character development piece about Jordan Burroughs over coming adversity.

”Here we are with Jordan Burroughs of Nebraska and Mike Poeta of Illinois.” “I’m Joe Buck and here in the booth with me, the one and only, Jay Glazer!” “Man I’m excited, we have two guys battling national champs about to crack skulls at 157 pounds.” Announced Jay Glazer. “All right my prediction is that Howe will be the first to beat Jordan Burroughs this year.” Said Jay Glazer with some excitement. I’m predicting that Burroughs will beat Poeta because he is the best freestyle wrestler in the world.  Joe Buck announces,”And Burroughs will just beat Poeta by a point and now is a NCAA champion at 157 pounds congratulations Jordan, What a battle.”

In 2009 Jordan was going in to a dual meet with a 7-0 record. He was facing Central Michigan's Steve Brown. He was beating Brown until he tore his pcl and lcl in his left shoulder. Now the NCAA has a rule called medical redshirt. When Jordan returned as a redshirt senior to wrestle an extra season he bumped up to the next weight class. When Big Ten 165 pounders found out about Jordan Burroughs redshirting and bumping up to a 165 pounds they started to work because they knew he would be a tough opponent. With Burroughs overcoming adversity of the injury he finished the 2011 season undefeated. He had bonus points in 17 straight matches until it was broken by Wisconsin’s Andrew Howe.

Three weeks after college Jordan started training for freestyle wrestling in the 2012 olympic games in London. Before he could get there he had to take at least 2nd place to make it into the tournament. Jordan won the men’s 74kg weight class and was headed to London. With the United States not having a gold medalist at all in the tournament. He was able to change that when he wrestled Sadegh Saeed Goudarzi of Iran. It was sad that the United States only had Jordan Burroughs and Jake Varner to take home a gold medal, but Jordan overcame adversity once again.

Jordan Burroughs is the best freestyle wrestler in the world. Burroughs took gold in 2012 as a 74kg freestyle wrestler representing the United States. Since he took gold he won 250,000 dollars. They should be payed more for dealing with the pain involved in wrestling. Now that you know my opinion on freestyle wrestling, who do you think is the best?




     

Analyzing Donald

        Authors Note: This is a character analysis about how Donald in the book Takedown changes as a person and as a wrestler.

        Donald, after he had watched a high school dual meet decides he will join the middle school wrestling team. When he decided he figured it would be like any other sport right? Wrong wrestling is a tough sport that involves no running and nothing with a ball just you and the other guy trying to beat each other. He discovers that when he wrestles Tavo, the eight grader who is on varsity. He starts to get down on himself until he works with his coach and steals the varsity spot from Tavo. 

        Then from Tavo's point of view he realizes he has a new practice partner he thinks that it will be all easy and he will be able to keep a varsity spot. When his practice partner Donald starts thinking about quiting he influences him to work with coach and him before, after, and during practice. Then he has a wrestle off and then Donald takes the spot from him.