The flower and the vine

HORSEPLAY

Like the flower needs the vine, professional sports cannot exist without fans. In our area, high school sports are the exact opposite.

It's a wintery Saturday night in northwestern Wisconsin. The kind where you walk across the parking lot and the inside of your nostrils instantly freeze.

There are droves of other people trudging their way across the parking lot just like me, head down, shielding any open skin from winter's chinlock. Outside in the parking lot, it's dark and quiet, with the exception of a hundred in-unison faint squeaking sounds. You'd think everyone was chewing fresh raw cheese curds, but alas, it's just the snow squeaking beneath our shoes.

There's no social chit-chat during our gantlet, as everyone has the same task at hand. Our focus is as frigid as the frozen breath on the dairy farmer’s mustache holding the door for me; get inside the high school gym as fast as possible.

There cannot be a bigger contrast in life than there is between a frozen February parking lot power walk and a jam-packed high school gym.

As soon as the gym doors open, the senses explode. From the scent of freshly popped popcorn to the pep band playing the pre-game 'Rocky' theme song to all your friends you haven't seen all week saying 'hey,' it's the place to be in small-town northwestern Wisconsin on a Saturday night.

The true definition of an 'electric' crowd is a collective shared emotion by all. The entire crowd has to interact and be together for the euphoria to build and the feeling to fester. That's electricity. There can be excitement watching a game on TV or live-streamed, but the viewer is void of that electrical shared connection.

One could argue electricity happens at a professional game, no doubt, and it does, but much of it seems synthetic during the regular season The reason the electricity in the high school gym has more amps per person is because of the relationships. The girls and boys competing against each other are either your own kids or the kids or grandkids of the people you know. When shared connected relationships are mixed with hometown pride, the result is pure Sconny Saturday Night Fever.

I remember River Falls High School junior wrestler Gavin Kohel used to collect pencils when he was in elementary school. I know this because he was in my daughter's class and I vividly remember driving her over to his house so she could give him a couple pencils she bought for him.

It rips your heart out to see any high school athlete have a season-ending injury because the seasons are so few, but in the case of Gavin Kohel, he turned a season-ending injury into a story for all seasons.

Kohel was taking on Rhinelander senior Gavin Ostermann in the section high school wrestling finals recently.

Ostermann was up by a point late in the match and did an outside trip move.

'I felt a pop,' said Kohel, 'And I had to take a break for a little bit.'

Kohel had torn a ligament in his left knee, but he kept wrestling.

The match went into overtime.

'I took a double leg out of heaven, I guess,' said Kohel, 'And ended up getting the takedown. My brother came running down and he was getting yelled at by the security guard.'

Kohel had qualified for the WIAA State Tournament, but he still had a torn ACL and that type of injury is season-ending every single time. That is, unless you're Gavin Kohel.

'I was focused on scoring and I can't think about my knee when I'm trying to score,' said Kohel.

Kohel won his first match at state, once again, in overtime. He won his second match, but then faced off against one of the top ranked wrestlers in the 182-pound division in the nation.

Kohel ended up with a sixth place finish at the state tournament and there was not even a glimpse of an excuse or regret.

'I mean, yeah, it hurt, but I thought I was a hundred percent at state. I'll keep working and have another shot next year.'

Kohel did have surgery to repair the ligament and will begin rehabbing very soon. He will be back next year to play football and wrestle and cheering for kids like Gavin Kohel is why high school sports are the flower AND the vine for me.

BY GREG PETERS