I have a third son.
He came into our lives when he was already in high school, which means he listens to advice with the same genetic accuracy as my other two sons, somewhere around a lofty 0.6% on the first pass.
The pattern has always been predictable. I give advice, he ignores it. Things go sideways, he calls again. I give the exact same advice, this time he listens. The outcome improves, then he calls back and says, “I wish you would’ve told me that the first time.” Which is always an interesting moment, because I’m quite certain I did.
I’ve written about baseball, and I coached youth football for more than a decade, but anyone who knows our family knows this truth: we are a wrestling family. Both boys were four year varsity starters and each finished with more than 120 wins. Wrestling has a way of stripping everything down to what matters. There’s no clock management, no hiding, no blaming the weather, the refs, or the play call. It’s you, another human being, and the work you either did or didn’t put in.
My third son came into our family through wrestling.
In high school he was about 280 pounds, which made it hard to move and even harder to imagine competing at a high level. Along the way, something clicked, he decided to change the story. He dropped nearly 100 pounds to wrestle at 182, and in doing so surprised a lot of people.
His teammates used to joke that when he took his shirt off, he looked like a melted ice cream cone, which is not exactly the look most people associate with intimidation. I watched all of his matches, usually from the front row, yelling encouragement that he pretended not to hear. One match in particular still makes us laugh when we talk about it.
I was sitting next to a group of friends of his opponent, a scary looking kid who was all muscle and already had a tattoo in high school. He looked like he’d been bench pressing since grade school. Meanwhile, my third son was warming up nearby, still carrying visible evidence of the weight he used to be.
They were laughing about the mismatch and one of them said something along the lines of how unfair it was and how my son was in trouble. I nodded and agreed, saying that it wasn’t really fair and that their friend was in serious trouble. They laughed even harder.
Then the match started, and Ol’ #3 took Muscle Boy into deep water to see if he could swim.
What wasn’t obvious to the crowd, or to the peanut gallery sitting next to me, was what lived under the surface. There were hundreds of hours of running, sweating, and burning fat, along with the work of building lungs and resolve. While the outside still told an unfinished story, the inside was a finely tuned machine.
He didn’t overpower his opponent so much as outlast him. Conditioning breaks people in a way strength alone never will. When you can push hard every second of a match without worrying about running out of gas, it makes a wrestler fearless. That is what we call taking him to deep water. Then you see if he can swim.
After graduation, he called again, following the same familiar pattern. He was drifting, doing day labor, and wasting time. We talked, I gave guidance, and eventually it stuck.
He joined the U.S. Navy and entered their nuclear program. The U.S. Navy Nuclear Program is widely regarded as one of the most demanding technical training pipelines in the world. The academic load is relentless, the attrition rate is real, the pressure never turns off. The program builds an uncommon level of discipline, technical confidence, and mental toughness.
Now this was not a Disney movie. The phone calls continued and the self-doubt was real. I can’t remember how many calls I received the night before a major test, each one starting with some version of, “If I fail this one, I’m out of the program.” Somehow, test after test, he pulled it out. Just like the kid who once silenced laughter on a wrestling mat, he slowly turned instructors into believers.
Fast forward to today and he has already completed his sea time, spending countless hours under the ocean. When his shore rotation came around (cue Top Gun: Maverick) he became an instructor at the very school that once caused him so many sleepless nights and so much doubt about what would come next.
I spoke with him over the weekend, and when doubt creeps in these days I remind him to look at his body of work instead of fixating on whatever uncertainty he’s dealing with at the moment. That body of work includes a solid career, a wonderful wife, two beautiful kids, a happy home, cars in the driveway, and a bank account that doesn’t flinch.
Once he found his path, he focused his effort, just like he did in wrestling and just like he has every other time it mattered.
My third son is a living reminder of something I’ve seen over and over again in sports, in leadership, and in life: when you give something your full effort, it works. Not most of the time and not only when it’s convenient, but every single time.
Hard Work Pays Off, Always.