Wrestling Blogs - Dean Stupar

This is probaly going to be the first of many blogs that i will post. So let me start by talking a little about my self; i am a 5'7 135 pound college student who attends florida state university. Now as u might know, florida state doesnt have the best wrestling team, but i am used to it. I was a third place state finalist in florida, in the 2-A states finals, and i lost to Terry Dawson in the Semi finals( which can be seen under my videos). I worked throughout high school with a limitied supporting cast of teammates, that never focused enough to make a state run, as i was. I placed my sophomore and senior year with a 6th and 3rd place repectivly. I gave everything i had and besides a couple minor mistakes i believe i would of won a state title, but regardles of excusses i didn't.

Since i have graduated high school i have learned a lot about myself and looked deeper into what made me who i am. I can say that the first time i ever had a drive to win was the first time i set foot on a baseball diamond. im not here to boast or nething along those lines im just here to tell you me. i have loved sports since the first time i have steped foot on a baseball diamond. i was never graced with a father who was a all state wrestler because i never had a father figure in my life, yet i still won a team mvp for the first team i ever played on. but it didnt stop their. my mom(who is the greatest person in the world if u ever asked me wanted more), she wanted me 2 become the greatest person i could in all aspects of my life, so instead of just having me do one thing she kept me occupied at all times, which later i relieaved was just a plot to keep me away from all the sorrows that this world has to offer. So she then enlisted me into a world class chess team, which i flourished at. i was the nevada state champ for kindergarden and 1st grade and multiple award winner in many national tournaments. I can thank this for all my startegic thinking and always having the awareness of not just thinking one move head but one, two and most of the time 5 steps ahead. I never really had a great concept of how important this was until my junior in high school when i started using my reaction in matches instead of my head.

Besides baseball and chess in elementry school i also was a part of what was called the jogging club. his club, which seemed like just an excuse for getting out of the house, raised some of my main funtimentals that most peole wouldnt see until at least high school and if not then, then im sorry. But this jogging club showed me that i could run for hours and hours nad not give up. which i became very happy about. then came my middle school days: football girls and a little bit of what school kinda was. Football, at the time was the best thing i was envoloved in, even though i was small for my age(4'5 75 pounds soaking wet) it didnt matter. Even the kids at that time didnt have the determination that i had. i was at every practice and every game(even at 9 years old, i covered up a 2 inch cut on my ear just so i could play against the returning champs). i won mvp that year and the next, but when middle school football came and i busted my butt every practice to try to get that starting stop, but i new it would never come, because the coach had an ideal of a tall fast reciever and i didnt quite fit that catagory, but understand that i did play. Not because i B and MOANED, but because i studied the play book and i made it seem that every cut i made and every catch i made could and would be my last, if it wasn't perfect. i often got comment in practice like "Now that how that play showed be run, nice job stupar", but that just added 2 the already fueling fire. because u c i am not one that stays on the bench, i love the action, the thrill the adreniline.... but i will get to that later.

after some middle school sports like soccer and basketball(which my 8th grade year i was the last cut for the team and the only tram i didnt make). That is the only year i remeber NOT winnining an award for something.

HIgh school was an amazing experiance for me. I was a 4 year varisity starter in cross country(which i can thank my elementry days of wanting to have more miles in the jogging club then ne1 else), 4 year varsity wrestler(ill explain this more) 4 year varsity track and field runner and 3 year wiwghtlifter.

Lets me start off by explained the sport that i had such a deep passion 4 as a child but slowly wore off the more i new that wasnt who i was, Track. U have 2 understand that i was running around in a circle since i was in 1st grade ud in las vegas. i was 2nd my first year of the running club and was won it the following 2 years, which a 1st and 2nd grader at the time never accopmlished, pretty much only 4th and 5th graders ever won it. in middle school i won pretty much every i event i entered(1 mile, 4 by 800 and 800), until i met my best friend, who is now running cross counrty and track in penecola, and he beat me, but i hurt my quad in the race, so i will never admit totall defeat. lol.

Now a new sport that grabbed my attention and possibly helped me get into wresling( thanks to a senior on the XC and wretling team, who i now sometimes train with )croww counrty. I hate when other people who i feel aren't as talented, conditioned or even have the capability to push them selves to the limits that u have to indore. I remeber the 2nd day i ever came out 2 practice the person who was the last place on varsity said "dont even try, no matter what u do u wont make it on varsity". i took this as a challenege, and i believed i sucseeded. The 1st race i was the 8th seed in the lineup, and the 1st sport 4 JV(for those of you who dont no varsity cross country in florida, it is made up of the top 7 runners pre concivd by the coach). I beat the 7th guy in the 1st race(he was a junior) yet i still wasnt varsity, because the coach THOUGHT that he was just off and needed another race. After that i never looked back. I took 2nd place overall in the following weeks race in the jv event. i was finally placed on varsity, and i never looked back. I had a great career running with a all county position in each of my sophomore, junior and senior year with a 3rd team all confrence honors, 2nd team all confrence and 1st team all confrence respectivly.

After all the running i did in my life and the lack of muscle strenghth for my light cardiovascular body structure, i did weightliting. the only reason i realy did it was because i couldnt stand not have some structured practice a day or the freedom to do what i wanted. and i knew that even the tiniest little bit couldpay off in my wrestling.

Track is a short story, after middle school i never had the same appreciation for track. I Dont no if it was because of the time of the year that is was held(spring) which was the end of my wrestling season or because i was just tired of it but i didnt do 0. i never really understood that in track, u need people who would push you past your point of giving up, yet still be within 5 feet of u because they are goin through the same struggle you are. i dont regrett not giving it my all but i did make an effort to try to bring honor to my school and the team. even though i was very laxidazical in practice, i would still push my body to the limits, though those limtis were a lot easier reached then if i was well conditioned like i was supposed to( i put "should" but i retracted this because if i didnt have a passion 4 it then there should be no reason 4 me to feel so srongly about what it is im doin, right? but that was wrong, because if if i told the coach that i was goin 2 take it easy that year, i would never. i just played it off like i didnt care, but take it from me, the things that u think u can cannot get better at, u always can, for its not the thingsare easily overcome that make u a better person but the tough, unexpected and most of the time unannoucned things that make you into the man you are or will become.

Now i can fianally strat talking about my 1st love, Wrestling. I instanly feel inlove with the sport from the 1st time my step dad brought it up in the living room, or from when i became a friend of the future most influencial man on my young career, my wrestling coach(Big Shout out to the man, the legend and the most spirtual man i no; Pete Smith). I came onto a team in toumial, a new coach, very stubborn leadership abnd a man who wasnt afraid of a conflict but would take the sweatest shirt off his body just if he thought u needed it. NO one at the time, including me really understoop the intentians of why coach smith would return after 14 years of retirement and reffering to take over a team that was unworthy of ne words he had to offer. Yet i would hear from him such saying as, "just wait, in 4 years it will pay off" or a a constent thought of "DO THE RIGHT THING" for he was a very spirtual man( not saying that im not, but i believe in more of a self indueced happiness then waiting on something to happen), and he acted more allong the lines of a nervous father wanting his own child to succeed then own intrest, Because his dream had not come tru, his dream has always been to ref a state meet, and with many discusians he KNEW he would of been in lakeland(the home of the florida state finals) during his tenure as a coach. But not only did he have 2 scarifice his own personal dreams possibly a few years, probably as much as 7 if my rotation is correct, so instead of fufulling his dream at the right age of 53(sorry if im wrong but im bad with remebering the VERY little detaisl, and besides i think i took a few years off neways ;]) but instead he will probably have to wait until at least 60 maybe evern l8er. AND on top of all that we had one of the most ununiform and very tough love senior class that wadnt ready for change and defiantily wasnt expecting the like of the great pete smith.

I was very fortunite though. HE can at a point where i was a young freshman, with a good work ethic and a hunger for a greater purposs. This was only fueled by the negatives that the seniors of the team had given me, because in my wieght class i had a experinced wrestler(6 years before high school, but he was still a freshman, he was close with the older coach). Yet i made it a point to myself to beat him as soon as i could. i never new that the time would come in my first chance. He new a lot more then me but since i had wrestled with him 4 a few weeks i picked up on his tendacies, which i can thank my old chess skills for. My 1ST EVER match went into overtime and i ended up victories. Yet when i was done i wasnt sad for his loss or what it what mean to him, but how i new that this was my connection. I looked at the corner which he sat crying in and saw how the seniors cheered 4 him during the match but left him over there for grief and had no consoling. THIS showed me that there will alwayd be winners and losers in life, and no matter what side of the see-you are on, there are goin to be people behind u helping you rise up and others who will pressure into coming down, and i promised myself not to let that happen. I was goin to be the best wrestler i could b on the mat and the best person i could be off of it.

This wrestle off was the 1st of many challeges that i would expect. he was a good wrestler and always scored points for us when we bumped for tournaments, but i just had to no that the spot was mine. i had an good freshman season with 15 wins and 13 loses, and i had the best record for all the underclassmen on the team, and i would oftern make it farther then all of te younger kids and sometimes even the seniors. at this time i new if iwant to be the best i would have to commit fully to the sport, which i did, and the rest of my sporst suffered because of this. i made it to regionals that year but had a hard time competing thanks to a upper respitory infection and could hardly breath, yet i still went out there and gavi it my all, I wasnt going to remeber my freshman season as the one regionals i missed. i dont miss important events.

My Sophomore season i could probly say was my favorite year. I was a young skinny kid who dropped down 2 103 for the 2nd year in a row and i was reapin the benifiets. All the seniors who had given me trouble then eventually saw how my efforts helped the team grow and do better, were now gone and i was alone in the center of the circle as the captain with one other upperclassmen. this was my year of making a name for myself. i beat some very tough kids and i won 3 matches against eventual state champs, somthing that i was never able to do in later years. I went into states with a good record. I would have to say my most crowning achievement in my career was against a world class wreslter in the regional semi finals, i didnt win, helll i didnt even come close to winning but i did do something that no 1 had done thus far that no other wrestler in florida had done, and from what i have seen, never has happened thus far. i Agravated, no, pissed off one of the greatest wrestlers i have ever seen and proble nation/olympic champion. i came out on the losing end, but i almost cost him his season, when he got called for 2 different unsportsmanships by boths ref's but i made it clear to my coach and the refs that i didnt want him to be thrown out. I mean what more did i need then the knowledge that i could break the unbreakable, that i could stop the unstoppable. i felt euphoric. i did well in state and placed 6th but i new i could do better since i believe i should of placed 4th, instead of the 6th.I had the best record of my career(which i am kinda disappointed in that).

Probly my only real downfall as a wrestle i can spot was my junior year. the Team was depleated, there were mayber 12 kids who stuck it out the whole year, and maybe 3 off them were in my wieght range. but that didnt bother me, because i trained myself to wrestle heavier kids and make myself stronger. I bumped up to 112 this year, because it was very improbale for me 2 make 103 and i new that my junior wasnt what i was goin 2 be remembered 4, it was to be my senior year. i worked hard, but not tough. i ranyet fast, but that was because i was naturally fast. i had no real drive to do great because i always feel back on the point that no matter what i still had next year. Probably the the 2nd most important thing that happened tis year was my 1st tournament win. i had placed at states yet i never was on the top of the podeum. Yet when i won my confrence i knew that a champion was inside me and i new it was ready to unleash. This dragon i had in me was completly untrained when it came to crunch time and because of that i had a very dissoppointing state series where i lost in overtime, but u still believe to this day that the ref mad a bad call and awareded him a point(no matter how much i saw it was a bad call, it was a ref's decision). i was devastated to say the least. i vowed that i wouldnt let something like that happend again and i was going to work my butt off to make it back 2 lakeland where i felt i belonged with all the rest of the champions.

1st step happened 2 weeks after states when me and a close friend of mine got the hunger for winning, his was more of a hunger to show that he wasnt just the baby in his family but much more then that. So we soat help from an alumni from our school and citadel students matt and billy bullwinkle. there teachings expecially from the new coach Matt was exeptional. I atteneded the j robinson 28 day intensive camp, yet, the most effective move were the moves that he taught us. This college type mind set that no one can hold me and no one can stop my shot made me in2 the wrestler i am 2day. i was very victorious my senior year, i lost a quite a few matches but they were either in overtime or by a point or 2 to a top state quality wrestler. so when states cam along i knew what i was in store for. I harresed my opponnts in the 1st few round with a large major decision against the then ranked 4th kid in the state(i was 3rd all year) and followed if up by teching my oppnent in the quarters. If there ever was a match that will be in my head it will be my semi final match. i could explain myself in complete detail on how the match went, to this day, but i just cant bare think about it. to make the story short i lost by a point, and was going 4 the takedown at the last sencond. i was absolutly devasted, my whole dream of becoming a state champ was crushed, and there was nothing i could do about it, no "next years" no "we will prepare and beat him next time" it was over. I had a hard time dealing with it but i got over it with help from friends and family. i placed third with a major decision in the consi finals, atleast my careear went out with a bang...

yet i still dreaded on that lose. whenever some1 would bring it p all i thought about was that ankle pick that i didt drive into harf enough, or the only craddle that i gave up since my sophomore year. But i have come 2 realvize that since walking away from the sport that match might have been the hardest lose i have ever had but probably the match that defines me as a person. i never gave up, i never waited for an oppritunity for a unearned point, i went balls to the walls for 6 minutes and gave everything i had out there, and for that i can finally coup with that.

I have had thoughts that the sport i loved, the sport that i gave so much 2, didnt return the favor. But in retrospect, that match was probably the greatest thing that ever happened 2 me. It showed me that no matter what u do, there are no guerrentees in life. Yes you might have done everything you could have done, yes you could have been favored by every person in the world, you still have to get the job done. This match, though it was a lose on my statistics, was the biggest win in life i ever had. It showed me that no matter how deep and dark it is there is still hope. this hope changed after that match from becoming a state champion to, becoming the greatest person i could be in life.

Recently i had another part of my life that once was a standard thing , like winning or having fun, was slipping away. For this i am talking about my education, because u see i never really had to strive to do well in school, i was just naturally bright and never had to put in effort. yet when i came to college my world was turned upside down and i hit rock bottom. i was on the road to failing and i need a change. i needed a drive to make me a better person. in all my other sports it was a displine or a hunger for exalence. I never really understood until i watch my semi finals match on this website that i learned that i couldnt want for a hunger to come at lunch time, but i had to force myself to want a better formyself.

Please push yourselves everyday because you wont no what hit u when it is all gone and there is no room left for you in that room you call home for those 4 grueling months of torture. Push hard everyday because tommorrow might end something great, and who really want to go out knowing that if they got one more chance to go back and do it all over again.

CARPA DIEM(sieze the day)