Christilaw: Wrestling makes room for athletes of all sizes

I used to be taller.

No idea when it happened, but it seems as I have grown older, I have somehow become more susceptible to the forces of gravity.

And I admit that I self-consciously feel the need to point out that fact whenever I fill out one of those forms that ask for your height and weight. And no, I don’t feel that need to comment about that last part. It’s more of a need-to-know kind of thing, and there are days when I don’t even feel the need to know.

I remember a middle school basketball coach, when it came time to fill out the roster information for the game program, asking us how tall we wanted to be. Everyone threw out a height of somewhat greater altitude. We didn’t consider it fibbing – we were just rounding up.

Tall is fun, and it comes in handy watching parades or retrieving something off the top shelf, but it has a downside – it gets dangerous in the kitchen if someone leaves a cupboard door open (I have bumps on my head over that one) and knee room would be a big concern were I shopping for a subcompact.

As a culture, we like tall. We’re fascinated with tall. The Internet is full of searches for “how tall is … ” and we stop to read those stories about “the tallest man/woman in the world.”

Wilt Chamberlain stayed in the public eye long after his amazing NBA career was over. Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar first came to the public’s attention for being tall and both have stuck around because they have a unique, perhaps even an elevated, perspective on various subjects.

When we talk lovingly about the Gonzaga men’s basketball team, whose names do we remember first? The big guys – even we can’t necessarily spell them, we know their names.

I am fascinated by the athleticism of WNBA players like Candace Parker (6-foot-5) and Elena Delle Donne (6-5) and enjoyed the career of Moscow’s Andrea Lloyd-Curry (6-2). I miss the Seattle Storm’s Lauren Jackson (6-5), and I still remember how dominant the 5-10 Nancy Lieberman was during her incredible college and professional careers and consider her to be one if the finest basketball players, man or woman, in the history of the game.

And I found it interesting interviewing the Storm’s former head coach, Anne Donovan, who stands in at 6-8, a former Naismith Award winner while playing at Old Dominion.

The Seattle Seahawks sparked a trend in the NFL by seeking out tall players, 6 feet and taller, to play cornerback – a position that used to emphasize speed over size. Richard Sherman (6-3), Kam Chancellor (6-3) and Jeremy Lane (6-0) all possess both attributes. And while Earl Thomas looks small by comparison, he stands 5-10.

Basketball, too, underwent a revolution size-wise – especially after former West Valley High coach Jud Heathcote discovered the added benefit of having a 6-9 point guard named Magic Johnson in his starting five at Michigan State.

Which brings me to why I thoroughly enjoy the sport of wrestling – and I do mean wrestling. Not the ’rassling you see on cable.

Don’t get me wrong. I had no talent for it as a kid and hated engaging in it because, being tall, I always ended up practicing against a sadistic kid my own size who reveled keeping my nose tucked neatly into his arm pit. When that happens, you’ll trade every bit of tall you have just for a breath of fresh air.

But as a sport, wrestling doesn’t just make room for all sizes, it has a deep need for athletes of every size and shape.

One of the biggest challenges high school wrestling teams have is getting enough depth to be able to fill out an entire varsity lineup.

You need kids who can barely crack 100 pounds at weigh-in just as much as you need the 275-pound heavyweight.

Trust me – those little guys are often the best show. Forget about looking away. Some matches you don’t even dare blink.

It’s a sport that abhors a size mismatch. The difference between the individual weight divisions is less than the weight of a gallon of milk.

Best of all, a wrestling match doesn’t measure how tall you are. It measures how big your resolve is, it measures how deep your reserves are. It’s a test of your intangibles.

To borrow the old cliché, it’s a sport that doesn’t care about the size of the dog in the fight (other than that weigh-in stuff). It cares about the size of the fight in the dog.

Voice correspondent Steve Christilaw can be reached at steve.christilaw@gmail.com.