I experienced one of the most emotional days I have had in a while this past weekend. We hosted regionals, which is the qualifier for our national tournament; the top 4 placers in regionals will compete in nationals. The past 5 years of my life have been a roller coaster ride that has given me many emotional highs and lows. There have been times when I felt as if my heart was wrenched like a rusty bolt, and times when I have felt so much joy I thought I was going to burst. I have cried several times (probably shouldn't be admitting that as a wrestler?) for both reasons, the emotional highs and lows. I remember two years ago when I was watching one of my best friends Jeff wrestle in regionals and I thought he wasn't going to qualify because he was sick and didn't initially make it into the top four, then I found out he could challenge for the 4^th place spot and he made it to nationals. I remember crying out of both sadness and joy within hours of each other that day, when I thought Jeff was not going to qualify and then when I found out that he would. It is a funny thing because Jeff talked in his high school senior speech about the reasons wrestling can make a guy cry (there are quite a few).

I experienced all kinds of emotions this weekend and when all was said and done, all I could think about was how unfair life is. I watched, my only fellow senior, Paul's season and college career come to an end. Paul was wrestling in his second match when his opponent pulled his knee outward in a quick motion and Paul's knee popped and in an instant his MCL was torn, he gutted out the rest of the match and won, but he was now a man on one leg. It is mind boggling to me how a person can train and wrestle and compete for six months and then in an instant it all changes. I think this might be somewhat of a reflection on life itself, I feel like life is a gift and you never know when it can change drastically and how quickly that change can come.

Paul is the only guy that I have wrestled with for the entire duration of my college career, we were roommates for four of our five years; Paul taught me how to ride a unicycle, make liver and onions, and how not to ski. I had the awesome privilege of standing next to Paul on his wedding day, and I know he will be right there for mine (well assuming I find a girl and all, I have a big nose ;) Paul is one of the toughest guys I have ever met and one of the most compassionate guys I have ever met. I know without a doubt that he would do anything for me; this is what made it hurt so bad watching his season end like it did.

In my mind Paul deserves to be a national wrestling champion, even though this did not happen for Paul I believe he is what my dad calls a "true champion". A true champion is someone who perseveres, someone who gives his all for what he believes is a good cause no matter what the outcome, someone who gets lost in his friends struggles and finds themselves in the joy of others.  Paul epitomizes a true champion. So I must ask myself, why does a guy like Paul have this happen to him? One of my other best buds on the team Ryan came up to me after Paul's match and told me that it was going to be ok because God had a plan and a reason for what had just happened. What happened to Paul this past weekend is still very difficult for me to swallow (probably because I am not fully trusting God), but I couldn't agree with Ryan more.

One of my other best buds Derek didn't qualify for nationals either. We were in the same situation, we both got 5^th place and needed the wrestlers who had beat us earlier in the day to get 3^rd so we could challenge for 4^th. The guy that Derek needed to win didn't and my guy did so I got the opportunity to challenge to go to nationals. Is it fair that I got the opportunity and Derek didn't? Derek works his tail off to be the best wrestler he can be and gives so much to our team. I don't know why God is allowing me to wrestle in nationals; I definitely don't feel like I deserve it any more than Paul or Derek. The only thing that I can come up with is like Ryan said, God has a plan, and even though life sometimes seems like it is not fair, when I step back and look at what God has blessed me with I realize he has been much more than fair.     

"Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep,
Beyond all towers strong and high,
Beyond all mountains steep,
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell."

-Samwise Gamgee-

As often times wrestlers do, I gauge the remainder of my season by the number of weigh-ins I have left. I have 3 weigh-ins left in my competitive wrestling career, which means we are down to regionals and nationals. It is funny how time can seem so long and so short at the same time. After our duals on Friday, I went back to Lincoln with my mom and we went to State wrestling to watch my Dad's team wrestle. Thinking back to my high school days it seems like it was ages ago that I wrestled in the State tournament, but when I think about the fact that I am a senior in college nearing the end of my wrestling career it seems just like yesterday that I was deciding what college I wanted to attend and visiting my best bud Jeff (a year older than me) at UNK. There were times during my college career that I thought it would never end, now that I am staring my last two tournaments in the face I realize how quickly it went. People always tell you to enjoy your time in college because you will be surprised at how fast it goes, well I couldn't really fully grasp that until now. I am excited for the next phase of my life wherever God takes me, and I am excited to move into perhaps more of a coaching, rather than competing, role in my life, but I know that I will miss so many things from college.

We wrestled our last home duals this last Friday; we won both against Fort Hayes State University and Augustana South Dakota. I went 1-1, it was crazy to think that this was my last time jogging out hearing our announcer yell "welcome your UNK Lopers!" for a home dual. It was not our last home competition because we host the regional tournament next weekend. Regionals and Nationals are always crazy, anything can happen at these tournaments. This is always a nerve racking time of the year and I am a little nervous going into regionals because this is the time that I want to perform my best; but I listened to a sermon this weekend that put things in very good perspective. The pastor was talking about worry and he said that there are basically two reasons why a person worries; to summarize, he basically said, either 1. You don't have a proper view of God and his power, or 2. You don't properly trust that God knows what is best for you. This helps me a lot going into regionals and nationals, all I have to do is wrestle my hardest and let God take care of the rest. Whatever happens I know that I get to enjoy the next three weeks with my teammates and glorify God with a few more wrestling matches.

It's a dangerous business, going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

-Bilbo Baggins of the Shire-

Keenan      

We just got back from our longest road trip of the year, the dreaded Colorado Trip, in which we tour through three different cities in Colorado over a period of four days. We wrestled Colorado School of Mines, Western State, and Mesa State. We spent approximately 24 hrs on a charter bus, and stayed in three different hotels (one of which I accidentally donated a Loper wrestling sweatshirt to). This is the kind of trip that brings tears of joy to your eyes when you see the sign that says exit 272 Kearney 1 mile ahead. It is an interesting thing because it is a rough trip, but I know that come next February it will be this valuable time with my teammates that I will miss as I reflect back on my wrestling career. My older sister really brought this to my attention when she wrote me a note right before we were about to leave for the trip. It went a little something like this "Keenski... I know you have a tough week ahead of you. I just wanted to encourage you. Even though parts of it will be miserable, there will be days in the future when you'll actually wish you could go on a 20+ hour team road trip in a broken down buggie with your teammates. Love you. I hope you have a great weekend, and God blesses the time you have to spend with your teammates!" My sister played volleyball for UNK so she knows a thing or two about road trips. This was really encouraging to me, and made me realize that I am going to miss all the great times with my teammates regardless of whether or not we were crammed inside a hot or cold (and definitely stinky) bus for hours on end. This is what inspired the "Top 29 reasons to be a college wrestler list" that my fellow senior Paul and I came up with on the trip back. Here they are in no particular order:

29. Stadium seating your couches 3 high!

28. Pushup contests to see who washes more dishes

27. Hours upon hours of Mafia (passes bus time well)

26. Pro and Sumo wrestling matches

25. Homemade bows and arrows (for a poster picture and personal image)

24. LOST and HEROES marathons

23. Nerf gun wars

22. Living Room Wrestling (submissions and furniture rules)

21. Daylight Doughnuts at 2 in the morning

20. Calf Brandings

19. Christmas Trees that don't fit in your house

18. April Fools Jokes (toothpaste Oreos, putting a friend's furniture in his bathroom, the phantom toilet sprayer, and of course hiding inside the locker)

17. Living with an Iguana, Sugar Gliders, Degus, Fish, and a dog (mostly at different times of course)

16. Learning how to ride a Unicycle

15. Various Halloween costumes (including Batman and Robin, and The Volleyball Team at the volleyball games)

14. Barbeques and Chocolate Malts (Mostly Post-Season)

13. Sticking a 25 lb. Plate in your roommate's bed

12. All-nighters in the computer lab with twizzlers and coffee to get the old paper done

11. Seeing who can ride their bike with no hands for the longest

10. Having your sewage back up in your tub (and bailing it out with a soup bucket)

9. Hanging the first ever indoor hammock (above the triple stack)

8. Prank calling my mom with the alias Jim Shorts

7. Foosball and racquetball tournaments

6. Brunch at Jeff's wife, Hannah's house

5. Flattops, bowl-cuts, and buzz-hawks

4. Inventing new types of food (the Dion Burger and the Sutt-Muffin)

3. Working the speed bag in the the scary basement

2. Movie nights

1. Bible Study

I am sure that my teammates would have plenty more to add but these are just a few of

the reasons I will miss college wrestling.

I guess it is kind of like when Eomer says, "These are indeed strange days. Dreams and legends spring to life out of the grass."

Keenan

This is a picture of my dog Strider (named after Aragorn son of Arathorn II, heir of Isildur) and I; my sister Brett knitted the hats.

This weekend after our dual with Nebraska Omaha the team came to my house in Lincoln and watched UFC 94 St. Pierre vs. Penn. Which turned out to be the second biggest attraction next to the chili that my Mom cooked for us (it seems to have become the post match food of the year). The UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championships) is very popular amongst wrestlers because wrestling is a huge part of it and just because we like any type of one on one competition that involves grappling. Georges St. Pierre (GSP) is one of my favorite fighters and he had probably the biggest challenge of his career in defending his title belt against B.J. Penn the champ in the weight division below him. If you haven't heard yet GSP dominated and solidified himself as one of the best pound for pound fighters ever. I like watching GSP fight because he is so entertaining, but the real reason that he is one of my favorite fighters is because of his attitude towards fighting. I was watching a pre-fight interview, and one thing that I found really interesting was St. Pierre's reason for fighting. He said that he fights for himself, because he loves the sport and he has a desire to compete. I found this really interesting because it is very different from a lot of the reasons that other fighters give i.e. for the fans, or the adrenaline rush, or the money.

I guess my reasons for wrestling are a little different but I respect GSP's honesty and humility. I would say that I wrestle for God's glory and for my teammates, or at least this is what I want to wrestler for. I will definitely admit that I sometimes wrestle for selfish reasons, reasons that I am not proud of, sometimes I wrestle because I want people to recognize me or think that I am somebody because of what I have accomplished on the wrestling mat. When I step back and think about what I really value in life I realize that these are not the reasons I should be wrestling. God, family, and friends are the things that are most important to me, or at least the things that I try to make most important to me, and so this is why I wrestle. I believe God has placed me where I am for a reason and blessed me with some awesome people for a reason; and this is why I wrestle, so that win or lose, God will be glorified in my effort and attitude. Now as basically everything in my life is, it is definitely a work in progress, something I know I will never have perfected but something I always need to work on.

This leads me to the last thing I want to write about. We dualed the number one ranked team in DII this weekend, our in-state rivals Nebraska-Omaha. We fought hard but lost the dual, and I lost by a technical fall (a margin of 15 points) to the number one ranked wrestler at my weight. I was thinking to myself after the dual how embarrassing it was to get my rump handed to me in front of a packed house and on T.V. (it was broadcast on our local T.V. station). As I watched the fights that night with my teammates and thought more about it, I realized that I had absolutely no reason to be embarrassed. I respect anyone who is willing to step out on a mat against another opponent and put it on the line. As my dad would say, this is what makes the sport of wrestling so personal; it is just you and the other guy. In my opinion it takes a ton of courage to be a wrestler, to go through grueling workouts, to make weight, to get beat up, and to test yourself against another man. To me it doesn't matter if you are undefeated or defeated on the season, I respect you for putting your body and mind to the test and stepping out where there is nowhere to hide. Well I can see that I have already rambled on long enough as usual, hopefully I haven't gotten too philosophical (thanks dad), so I will end it with a poem from Gandalf the Grey,

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."

-GTG FOTR-

This is a link to the video of my teammate Paul doing a backflip off our chin-up bar and then hanging from his toes (tales of which you heard of in my first blog)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shg1xoY-JE4

We wrestled at the University of Central Missouri this weekend. It was a full day with 4 duals right in a row. We wrestled Minnesota State University Moorhead, Truman State University, University of Central Missouri, and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. We won all the duals and had a barnburner with Wisconsin-Parkside in which the dual came down to the heavyweight match. Our heavyweight Derek (one of my roomies) weighs right around 200 lbs. so some would say that he is a little undersized for heavyweight; in my opinion though, it is kind of a good thing for both of us because he just eats the food that I am craving when I am dieting. I can vicariously enjoy food through Derek and he can gain weight, not a bad deal! Anyways Derek wrestled really well and got a win over a tough opponent to win the dual for us.

I had a really tough match against the MSUM wrestler in which I ended up losing, I was really frustrated after the match because I felt like I made some mistakes that I shouldn't have and that I could have wrestled a better match. After the match my training partner and one of my best friends Ryan came up to me and talked with me a little bit about the match, gave me a few words of encouragement, and told me that I would get the next guy. It is interesting how my thinking has changed on this since high school. I remember that often times in high school right after I would lose a match I wouldn't want to talk to anyone, I was usually angry or upset and just wanted to take some time to cool off and then talk later. Now I appreciate it when my friends come up to me and talk to me after my matches. Perhaps part of it is that I have learned to deal with losing better now that I have done more of it in college, but I think it is mostly just that I am realizing that my friends care about me and they want to be there for me to pick me up when I am down. This is really encouraging for me because I know that whatever wrestling, or life for that matter, throws at me I have people that care about me. I think I mentioned in my first blog that God has blessed me with some amazing friends and family, and it is amazing to me how he uses them in my life so often.

I guess this is where my oxymoronic title comes in. Last year we were wrestling in the National Dual semifinals against Mankato and I was winning my match in the third period. Probably to most people watching it looked as if I had it locked up but then all of the sudden I got pinned in a scramble. This was really tough because we ended up losing the dual by one or two points and my match was a nine-point swing. I can remember just being really heartbroken after the match because I felt as if I had lost the dual for my team. Right afterwards four of my best friends (Ryan, Joe, Paul, and Jeff) each came up to me individually and told me that they were proud of me for trying my hardest and that they were behind me no matter what. I have told this story a few times (I think it will be burned upon my brain forever) and every time I think of it I think about what amazing friends God has blessed me with. So in hindsight even though I lost that match, I feel like I won because of the way my friends treated me, obviously not in a pump your fist at the crowd sense, but in a wow this is what really matters in life sense.

I know that nobody likes to lose, I have never liked losing but it has taught me a lot throughout the course of my wrestling career. Vince Lombardi said, "If you can accept losing, you can't win." I respectfully disagree; actually I would say sometimes, losing can be winning. I guess it can best be described with this quote from Mister Frodo Baggins of the Shire "So all my plan is spoilt!...It is no good trying to escape you. But I'm glad, Sam. I cannot tell you how glad."

     In my 16 years of wrestling I had a first this past weekend. It was the first time that I have ever wrestled someone with the same name as me. We wrestled Colorado State Pueblo University and the wrestler at my weight was named Keenen (it is a slightly different spelling but pronunciation is the same). It was our first home dual of the season and we won. Home duals are, in my opinion, the best; you get to workout in your own wrestling room, sleep in your own bed, and you get to go home right after the dual and have some of Momma's homemade chili (my Mom makes the best chili on the face of the planet). My Mom is my personal dietician and I have no doubt in my mind that I would never be able to maintain wrestling weight without her, but she also knows how to treat a hungry wrestler after a match, and for a few of my teammates and I on Saturday night that was homemade chili (with a secret ingredient that you would never guess in a million years) and apple streusel bread! I'd better not get started on my Mom's cooking or we could be here for a while; I could probably do an entire entry on her homemade protein bars, but that is for another day. The point is that there is nothing quite like enjoying a homemade meal with family and friends after a match.

     Both my Mom and Dad got to come to the dual, which was pretty cool because my Dad (coaches at the high-school I attended) got done with his tournament fairly early in Lincoln and zipped up to Kearney with my Mom to watch the dual. My cousin Drew who also wrestles for UNK made it back from his tournament in Omaha, which he wrestled in earlier that day, and one of my Dad's former wrestlers Shorty (he is not really that short, but he is stout, we should call him Stouty) and his wife came up from Kansas. On top of that gang I live in a house, The Casa De Choir Boy house to be specific, with 3 of my teammates (Joe, D, and DE holla!), so needless to say it was a pretty fun filled chili feast!

Until Next Time,

--You can take my keys, but you can't take my freedom!--  That's for you Jrut.

Keenan    

I am exited to start my blog this semester. I have always wanted to do a blog but never found the opportunity until now. I am a senior education major at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (Go Lopers) this is my fifth year of wrestling at UNK (I redshirted when I was a freshman), and I am one of two seniors on our wrestling team. I am beginning to realize how quickly the real world is approaching as I just started my last semester of classes today toward my undergrad here at UNK. I am not really 100 percent sure what I want to do with my life yet, but I am sure God will give me a gentle shove down the right path when that time comes. 

One thing that I have learned throughout my college career is that I want to work with people. I student taught this past semester in 7^th grade science and 8^th grade history, although it was difficult at times, I really enjoyed the chance to build relationships with the students. Another major influence in my life that has given me a love for people is my friends; God has blessed me with some awesome friends that have shown me how enjoyable life can be when you are around great people. I'm sure I will be going into more detail about them later (like for instance how one of my best friends/teammates Paul can hang from his toes on a pullup bar). So as far as my future is concerned, I don't think I can say it any better than one of my all time favorite hobbits said it, when Frodo Baggins said "I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way."  

Enough about me and on to our weekend at the Cliff Keen National duals in Cedar Falls

Iowa; we ended up going two and two on the weekend and taking 4^th place out of a field of 16 teams. We had a battle against Pittsburgh-Johnstown in the first round which actually ended in a tie score of 17-17, but we got the win because our 174 lber. Kamarudeen (we call him Marty) won by a technical fall (a margin of 15 points), which gave us the tie-breaker criteria. We then won against Western Colorado, which put us into the semifinals. In the semis we wrestled Newberry a school from South Carolina and lost a close dual, which put us into the 3^rd and 4^th place match against Minnesota State Mankato where we lost another close one by three points.  In my opinion national duals is one of the coolest tournaments that we wrestle in.  It is held at the University of Northern Iowa and features every single collegiate division out there. Schools from DI, DII, DIII, NAIA, Junior College, and Club teams compete within there respective divisions to find out who has the best dual team. This is another reason that national duals is so awesome, the dual atmosphere really brings out the team spirit that most people didn't know was such a huge part of wrestling. Wrestling is often times considered to be an individual sport, but in my opinion it is just the opposite. There is no better experience in wrestling than getting wrapped up your teammates matches; the entire team screaming at the side of the mat until their voices are hoarse helping a teammate to dig deep and find that extra ounce of energy to wrestle his hardest until the end of the match. Well there is perhaps one thing that can compare with that, going out to the steak buffet after an all day tournament, but I guess that is a different kind of enjoyment! Well I can tell that I have already been long winded enough so I will let it rest until next week, we have a home dual coming up this weekend which will be a nice change of pace from all of the traveling! So until then Peace-Out and Sauerkraut!