My son Josh went to a wrestling 'dual' last Friday and tied up with a kid from Hobbs N.M. He ended up pinning the kid, and the kid came off the mat with a terrible attitude. He cursed the ref and refused to shake Josh's or our coaches' hands. Had I been his coach I would have kicked him off the team for that kind of attitude. The next day we went to El Paso for the Burges Invitational, and we knew Hobbs was attending the match also. To make a long story short, Josh and this kid were on opposite sides of their weight bracket, and met up in the finals. Josh told me earlier in the day that if he wrestled the Hobbs kid he felt that there was a good possibility the kid would try to injure him in order to win. When their match started they went back and forth through two periods, and started the third period tied 5 and 5. With 35 seconds left in the period the kid headbutted Josh and broke his nose, and the ref stopped the clock with the score still tied at 5 and 5. My wife (who is an R.N.) and I went down to the mats, and she set his nose back in place. The trainer put packing in his nose to stop the bleeding, but the ref said he couldn't continue. The trainer advised him that it was her call, not his, and that Josh could continue with a face guard. We had another wrestler that had gotten his nose broken a week before, and was using a face guard. Josh grabbed the face guard and put it on and went back out on the mat. The ref started the clock, Josh scored 3 more points on the kid in the last 30 seconds, and took the championship! Our coaches said they have never seen a kid go back on the mat after getting his nose broken. The Hobbs coaches came over after the match and apologised, but their wrestler would not even come over.
