MN USA State

OK, OK, here's the wrestling highlights from MN/USA tournament. Dietrich took 3rd in his weight class, losing only his first match in another instance of getting pinned when he was ahead. Good wrestling all the way through, though!!!!

I was hesitating to post because I somehow messed up the video quality. I'll do better with NSPSL championships coming up next week!

(His arm bar to pin combination has gotten deadly!)

A Couple More Wrestling Videos and My National Television Debut

This is not all there is to our life at the moment, but everything else takes so much time ... sigh.

Here are a couple more wrestling videos.

Dietrich versus one of his perennial rivals, Jake Sansovich:



And a few moves with names for Grandmas and Grandpas who might not yet know them, or for little cousins who might want to try them:




And here is my national television debut.

Another Wrestling Weekend

The competition was not quite as stiff this weekend, but here are a few matches -- this time filmed by Anna.

It's that time of year again ...

... the season we used to call winter is fresh upon us.

Dietrich got a chance to wrestle a national champion and current #1 ranked wrestler by USA wrestling.

Here it is round by round. Note ... Anna is a much better videographer than I am when I'm trying to coach.


Round 1: 0-0



Round 2: Dietrich goes in up 5-1



Round 3: Dietrich goes in up 7-6

An Amazing Wrestler with a Great Story

OK, yes. I've got wrestling on the brain. Pretty soon I'll get some pictures up of things like Charis walking, Dietrich playing the piano, Anna and Emily cooking with Mommy, Norah squishing worms .... stuff like that.

But Anthony Robles is a pretty amazing guy with a pretty amazing story and people outside of wrestling should know about him, too.

And here's a video of one of his recent matches at the 2009 NCAA Championships. This was the only full match available (because of the controversy at the end, no doubt); but it's a great demonstration of his will, technique, sportsmanship ... everything.

Watch it in HQ and full screen!

NSPL 85lb Results

Dietrich had his shot at wrestling redemption today.

Though he was down 2 pounds after yesterday's six matches, Dietrich got first-quarter pins in his quarterfinal and semifinal matches to set up a rematch of last year's 75# championship and a close loss in the first match of this season.

Here's a little clip from the quarterfinal for a warm up first, though:


Then after waiting for all the wrestle backs to finish it was time for the big one.

Dietrich's opponent has not lost in the NSPL for 2 years.

He's a seventh grader with dangerous upper body strength and a wrestling legacy.

Dietrich's three previous matches against him were 4-8, 5-8, and 6-8 losses.

(The camera work is a little shaky here and you get a decent shot of Jen in the background ... but thanks to Anna for shooting it so we've got something to post! We might have a better quality video later.)

click the full screen icon or click on the movie for a larger view.



So in the end ... Dietrich pulled it off!

And now he has this to show for it: a T-shirt, a medal, a tournament bracket, a seriously bloody lip, a sore back that's going to need some rest, bragging rights for a year and a grin from ear to ear!

!!!85lb North Suburban Parochial League Champ!!!

Lakeville Regional

Deitrich had a really tough bracket at the Lakeville Regionals this year! There were four or five really tough kids including two who Dietrich has lost to before pretty badly, so we were pretty sure he would have to come up with an upset to make it to state. And then most of the other kids were also pretty tough, certainly better than the kids he wrestles in his parochial league.

He wrestled his best, won his first match by pin, then lost his second 11-4 to the All American who pinned him earlier in the season. Once that happens you go into a bracket where you have to wrestle more matches. But he won his third and fourth matches to set up another tough match with the kid who took third at state last year. He lost 6-0 but wrestled him much better.

That was supposed to be the end of the going back to sate hopes, as his next match would be for fifth place ... one spot out of it.

But we got word that the kid who took second was not going to be able to go and was going to have forfeit his papers, making Dietrich's last match for a shot to go to state again!

Dietrich almost got a takedown with a high-crotch, but couldn't quite finish. The period ended 0-0.

Dietrich deferred for the second period and the kid chose down. Dietrich rode him out for the period but couldn't turn him. Still 0-0.

Dietrich chose down for the third period and with about 20 seconds left got a 2 point reversal for the win!

Pretty exciting! So now it's on to state!

Wrestling Update

The folkstyle season is winding down!

Dietrich qualified for the Lakeville Regional with the Northland Youth Wrestling Association (NYWA) again this year, but he's in a 'bottom year' -- meaning that he have to place in the top four among 5th and 6th graders at Lakeville to make it to NYWA Sate. Whereas last year was a 'top year' because he was the 'top' grade in the 3rd and 4th grade division. So the competition will be significantly fiercer this year. But we'll see.

Unfortunately, the NYWA regional this year is the day before the year end individual tournament for the North Surburban Parochial Schools League - the league he wrestles for Trinity in. That's the tournament Dietrich got second in last year and he's looking forward to facing the guy who beat him. It's going to be one heck of a weekend, though, and I'm not sure how one maintains the energy for something like that. If all goes well it will probably be 8 - 10 matches in two days (which is pretty much crazy and I'm not even certain is a good idea ... but then again, it might be fun).

Hey, at least he doesn't have to cut weight yet.

When those two events are done, though, unless he makes state he'll only have the more leisurely freestyle season remaining -- a practice a week and a Saturday morning tournament here or there.

Another Match from St. Stephen's

Figured it out!!!

I finally figured out the video thing.

Here's Dietrich's first St. Stephen's match from last week. You can watch it in high quality. I'll post another one later in the week.

Try not to think about the concussion that didn't happen, Grandma

OK, this wouldn't come up as an embedded video (some of you saw the title on your reader or feed earlier).

But check out one of my most nervous moments so far as a wrestling dad.

Turn up the volume.

Wrestling Update

Actually not much of an update so far this season -- nor too many good pictures. I get too into it. Next time I'll have to have Anna bring her camera.

Dietrich did qualify for the MN/USA Wrestling State Folkstyle Championships though by taking second in one of their qualifiers. (I'm not sure whether or not we'll go, though. Still working out the dates.)

At another qualifier he got his shorts handed to him by a guy and we found out he's an All-American -- the only one from Minnesota in Dietrich's age bracket.

A Little Early Season Wrestling Action

Forgive me, I'm just trying out some very rudimentary video effects. These are three little clips from Dietrich's tournament on Saturday, though.

It's that time of year ...

Dietrich's first match of the season!



Stepping on the mat for the first time since last season, Dietrich had his best finish yet against his new arch-rival, losing 6-8 in a well fought match. This was the same wrestler Dietrich lost to in last year's championship match.

A little practice and we'll get him next time.

Grandpa and Grandma Balsbaugh's Visit

Last week we had a visit from Grandpa and Grandma Balsbaugh (or "Grampy and Grammy" as my kids have taken to calling them, to distinguish, I suppose, from "Gramps and Grams"). Here's a little photo journalistic essay of just some of our activities. I was gone at the POP Men's Retreat most of the weekend, so some of these are from Grammy.


And I obviously wasn't there when the drove through this to get to Minnesota in the first place:

Despite the weather (I94 was eventually closed later that evening) They arrived on Friday night in time to catch Dietrich's last wrestling match of the freestyle season Saturday morning. Both admitted that they could become wrestling fans.

Then all went to church Sunday morning at Bethlehem Baptist and the kids happened to be singing in choir (no good pictures there). Afterwards Jen and the kids took Grampy and Grammy to the Guthrie Theater (one of the Seven Wonders of the Upper Midwest in my accounting).

Grammy got some nice artsy shots there that I haven't included. I'll leave that to her blog. These are just the best of the people ones.

I got home Sunday afternoon, and will throw a picture in here for anyone who hasn't seen me in ... oh ... 15 years.

Sunday evening we went out to a Mexican restaurant and then later to what has been voted one of the best ice-cream shops in the country -- the Grand Ol' Creamery on Grand Avenue in St. Paul.

Monday Grammy came to see the new Trinity School at River Ridge and People of Praise Servant Branch building (click here for a magazine article on the building).

Here's a shot of my Humane Letters Seminar room.

Afterwards Grammy, Jen, Nora, Charis and I went shopping for what has come to be "the big event" of every Grammy and Grampy trip.

Here's the shopping.

And here's the event .... Grampy's Tailgate Party!!!

(Note the purple beads.)

After dinner, we drove around the Cathedral Hill neighborhood in St. Paul. I forgot my camera and Grammy thought it was better than Boston! Next time she wants to take a walking tour.

Wednesday morning they had to pull away in their motor home for Pennsylvania, the beginning of a multi-month business trip.

But here's to next time!

Anna's Wrestling Debut

Anna also made her wrestling debut at last weekend's meet!

But before you get concerned (there are girl wrestlers -- against whom we have to forfeit if we come up against them), Anna debuted as a "wacker." Someone has to go out to the referee and tap him on the back when the time expires for the period.

One of the tournament organizers came up to us early in the meet and asked if Anna wanted to do it. She was really hesitant at first but he showed her how to do it a couple of times and then she did it the whole day! Eventually they even turned the stopwatch over to her and she got a free lunch out of the deal.

Here are some pictures:

And here is one more of Dietrich sixteen seconds before recording his new fastest pin:

Freestyle

OK, wrestling wasn't quite over.

Dietrich decided to participate in a short freestyle season. His last meet is this Saturday and we're hoping that Grandpa and Grandma B can make it!

If you're curious about the difference in freestyle and folkstyle, look here.

Wrestling and the Kingdom of God

This might not be as big of a deal as Abe and JJ were hoping for, but at any rate, here it is.

What I wanted to write about was simply a principle of living, a way of being, as applied to and worked out in wrestling.

It is my deep desire for myself, my family and anyone I know who bears the name of Christ around with them daily that we not separate the Kingdom of God from daily, ordinary things like breakfast, laundry, politics, economics, teaching, buying and selling ... and, yes, wrestling. Building the Kingdom of God is an all encompassing human project, a mission given to us not first at the Great Commission but first in the Edenic Commission, frustrated at the fall, refreshed and renewed thanks to God's covenant love multiple times in history and given its final shape in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ followed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

It is God's project.

It is a human project.

That's what the incarnation of the Son of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit tell us. God's project is a human project. He does not want to rescue us from being human or from ordinary life in order to draw us away to something else. The movement of salvation history is quite the other way. He has, in fact, rescued us by becoming human, not by drawing us away from ourselves but by drawing near to us himself.

And now that he has accomplished his Kingdom in us, he want to work that Kingdom out through us in the world.

In very brief, I think there are three common visions of what it means to build the Kingdom of God that compete significantly with what I have just laid out, three competing visions that in my opinion narrow the scope of God's work to something so slim that they almost cease to resemble the history of God's prior work in this world (and therefore become dangerously anemic, considerably unbiblical and gnostic enough to offer no compelling alternative to the world's own more robust and virile narratives of what it means to be human.) They are as follows:

1) The Kingdom of God as an Ethical Realm. Building the Kingdom of God in this vision means chiefly behaving well enough that other people recognize your personal virtue (your charity, your good deeds, your sweet disposition). God, who enables you to live well, gets the glory for your goodness. In its best version, this is, of course, a part of the Kingdom of God. But in and of itself it is, at best, inadequate.

(A very damaging version of this is when all of your personal virtue is wrapped up in things you don't do -- don't drink, don't chew, don't go with girls who do, don't cheat on taxes, steal from work, etc. I think this version of an ethical kingdom actually has very little to do with the Kingdom of God and more to do with a strange kind of ethical fear.)

2) The Kingdom of God as a Missionary Field. Building the Kingdom of God in this vision means exclusively missionary work in the conventional sense. The Kingdom of God is saving souls who are in darkness one soul at a time. Like ethics, of course missionary work in this sense has a place in the Kingdom of God. But considering it as the be all and end all of the Kingdom of God neglects a proper theology of God's entire creation and his plan not only for his special creatures but for his entire cosmos and their place in it. Salvation is not only salvation from something but salvation for something -- and that something is the Kingdom of God come in its fullness to the created order, not my personal salvation or freedom from the opression of sin.

3) The Kingdom of God as Heaven. As above, of course there is virtue in the idea of running well and deserving rest. Of course there is a place for the consolation of being with the Lord after death. But for some (many well meaning and well deserving of the rest they desire) the Kingdom of God is simply and unequivocally an ethereal spiritual dwelling with God ("where all existence is a dream of ease," as Homer might put it). Unfortunately, this also is not a sufficient vision of the Kingdom of God, especially when it is imagined in combination with the visions of Kingdom life laid out above. I'm not sure really how the contemporary version of this came about. It has something to do with consolation and the last few chapters of John's Revelation. But taking the book of Revelation in context, with its imagery and symbolism understood properly, the narrative culminates not in any ethereal 'Heaven' to which we go but in 'Heaven' (as the realm wherein God's rule is perfect) come down to the renewed earth. The real end of the story is here and is radically continuous with our present work of resisting, battling, and overcoming the World. So I'm afraid that to think of Heaven only as the peaceful reward of a life lived faithfully apart from the taint and smell of this world leaves the Christian vision little more than a sweet, sugary confection of dreamy gnosticism and piety -- a lollipop hope over which to linger while Babylon burns.

Wrestling?

OK, so all season long Dietrich and I and the whole family have been talking about wrestling (and other activities in which the family is involved) as a way of building the Kingdom of God in the more robust sense. There is a way to wrestle, a way to coach, a way to cheer and a way to be at a wrestling meet that builds the Kingdom of God. God's way of being in the world includes how we wrestle, how we cheer, how we win, how we lose, how we think about opponents, friends, teammates, etc.

This may seem at first merely a weird version of the Kingdom as an Ethical Realm, but in a mysterious way I can't quite explain yet, it's not that and that's not what we've been pushing for. It's the idea that God wants us to live out a new way of being human and that this includes a new way of wrestling.

A merely 'Kingdom of God as Ethical Realm' vision of wrestling might demand simply that you not cheat. A merely 'Kingdom of God as Missionary Field' vision might demand that you take the opportunity to pray before each match so others can see you and that you point to heaven when you win. It's neither of those. It's not baptizing wrestling with a certain ceremony or ethic that is foreign to the sport. And it certainly has nothing to do with dying and going to heaven.

It's being Christ as a wrestler and as a wrestling family from the inside out not from the outside in.

It's bringing the gospel in it's fullness, the evangel, the good news, to the human activity of wrestling.

It's the message of shalom not as an extra layer over sport but as worked out through sport.

It includes working really hard and leaving it all on the mat.

It includes emotion and passion.

It includes the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

It is not disembodied.

And like all things incarnational, it's a bit of a mystery and a bit hard to put onto paper.

But on Sunday, the final day of the meet, I think we saw the fruit of this mystery and our desire to work towards it in two incidents.

Preface: Not that I'm necessarily opposed to it ... OK, I might be, I'm still thinking about it ... but Dietrich does not wear "Jesus is my Sparring Partner" or "We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood" shirts. We don't kneel in prayer before every match. He doesn't cross himself before he shakes his opponent's hand or after winning.

But one parent sought out Jen to say, "You son is a really good sport and I just wanted to tell you that."

And after I had come up to the father of one of the boys Dietrich had lost to and thanked him for what he had said to Dietrich after the match, he sought me out later and asked, "Are you guys Christians?" When I said, "Yes." He said, "I could tell." We started talking about wrestling and the Kingdom of God. Then Dietrich and his son worked out with each other before the championship rounds and made friends (something Dietrich has been doing on his own all year.) And who knows where this is all headed as far as transforming people who might have used wrestling as an opportunity to make enemies with each other. Or towards transforming wrestling culture into something even greater than it is.

This is the shalom of the gospel working itself out in a gym in Rochester.

And it has nothing to do with ethical pride (I pray) or with the immediate desire to 'convert' the wicked Cobra-Kai wrestlers.

It is ethical.

It is evangelical.

But it is first and foremost life, the life of the Kingdom of God, the glorious freedom of the children of God.

State Update

The results are here.

Unfortunately, Dietrich lost both of his matches today. But he still took sixth in state and got to participate in the 'parade of champions.' They announced before the morning sessions that 4,200 wrestlers had begun the qualifying process at districts and only 300 remained in all the weight classes and grades. So it was a great tournament and a great year of folkstyle.

That loss yesterday in the last seconds turned out to be really critical as far as placing, because a couple of tough competitors (including the kid Dietrich was fortunate to pin in the second period) had been knocked off yesterday and won through to the third and fifth place bracket. So the two wrestlers Dietrich faced today were actually tougher than two of his three oponents yesterday -- even though it was in the consolation bracket.

The first match was really close. Dietrich had several opportunities for back points off of tilts that would have won him the match that he just couldn't quite hold long enough.

The second match was not quite as lopsided as the score, but the other wrestler (who Dietrich pinned in a surprise yesterday) was clearly the better wrestler.

There was another interesting surprise from the day, but I'm going to save that for a later reflection on wrestling and the Kingdom of God.

NYWA State

Here's where were're at with sate.

It's not a complete picture, but it is a bracket.

Dietrich lost an absolute heartbreaker in the semifinals to go into the championship match.

It was tied 2-2 with 10 seconds left and Dietrich's opponent got a reversal. Dietrich almost immediately reversed him again, but just after time had expired!!!!

Sigh.

Now he has two matches remaining. If he wins his first, he wrestles for third (the loser places fourth)

If he loses his first, he will wrestle for fifth (the loser places sixth).

So no matter what happens, he will place in state tommorrow!!! Anywhere from third to sixth.