As Drake VomBaur stared out from the tunnel and waited to enter the Ball Arena floor on Friday, a story played out in his head — one he’s told himself more than once this winter.
There was no crazy ritual. No making himself throw up or breathing routines.
Instead, the 106-pound Severance freshman concocted something straight out of a comic book moments before he hit the mat under the bright lights of the CHSAA state wrestling championships for his semifinal showdown.
“I like to talk to myself and think of myself as the hero in my story,” VomBaur said. “I think about my opponent and he’s a monster. I’ve got to go out there and I’ve got to slay him.”
Odd as that might sound, it’s something that’s worked all season for VomBaur. The freshman not only won Friday night’s semifinal, but he came back on Saturday and finished off a perfect 41-0 campaign with a 7-3 victory over Eaton’s Blake Hawkins in the championship round of the Class 3A 106-pound bracket.
If there’s anything else he normally does on a match-to-match basis — outside of weaving a good-vs.-evil narrative, of course — it’s comparing the task at hand with some of the other tough things he does on a daily basis.
“I try to think about all the past times I’ve done tough things, and it doesn’t just have to be wrestling-related,” VomBaur said. “It can be like a time I asked a girl to a dance or a time I ran until I threw up, just times where I did things that were hard, and I let my ‘big dog’ out. I’ve worked really hard. It took bravery, it took courage, it took grit and I like to play those things in my mind before a match. It kind of instills a ‘been there, done that’ feeling.”
Over the course of three days inside Ball Arena, the tunnels on each corner are often filled with wrestlers about to take the mat. Some are lost in the shadow their hoodies cast on their faces, letting others know not to disturb them. Other faces are fully exposed, wearing only their singlets. Some stand still in anticipation. Others bounce around with an Muhammad Ali-esque flow.
What remains true for all is the stakes of the match lying ahead, for which laser focus is a necessity. In that moment in the tunnel, the season’s preparation — and perhaps just as important, the day’s preparation — comes to a head.
Mead head coach Ty Tatham knows a routine can make or break a wrestler’s match. Because of that, he’s made the process of curating a good one a first-day-of-the-season point of emphasis.
Part of his scheme is to give his athletes the blueprint for a good pre-match routine. Most important is “figuring out what works for you at the beginning of the year.” Next is making it consistent.
Tatham has seen it all during his tenure in terms of wrestlers’ methods of getting ready. But one scenario haunts his sanity: “Craziness is the kid who is asleep in the bleachers, wakes up like one or two minutes before he wrestles and goes out there and throttles people.”
Windsor’s Noah Garcia-Salazar, for one, prefers a regimented routine. For the sophomore 144-pounder, it’s imperative to stick to what’s worked for him as he muscled his way to a third-place finish in 4A.
First, he’ll sprint down the quiet halls in the bowels of Ball Arena with music in his ears. There isn’t a lot of crowd noise that gets to those dark hallways, but whatever does make it through is drowned out by a music choice he said varies.
Then he meditates. He finds a quiet spot and focuses deeply on his breathing and his thoughts. Now is not the time to think about strategy or winning. Now is the time to dispel negative ideas.
As the match gets closer, he waits in the tunnel. His mind gets blank as his confidence grows. That’s the only part of his routine he doesn’t control.
“The farther away I am from the mat, I’m less confident, but when I get closer, I get so much more confident,” Garcia-Salazar said. Then, like VomBaur, it all comes to a head when he arrives at the mat. At that point, just one thing goes through his mind. “I’m going to beat him.”
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