When Shreya Pai was faced with a new and intimidating challenge, she found encouragement from a surprising source.
“Did you ever wrestle?” I asked my dad as I squirmed in the passenger seat. We were on the way to my first wrestling camp.
“Not really, but I did get into a lot of fights when I was younger,” my dad replied. That gave me some hope that maybe he could help me figure this out.
I didn’t want to go to the camp. I was nervous. Images of hospitals and ambulances floated around in my head.
It felt like an eternity before we found the wrestling room. A wave of sweat mixed with rubber greeted my nose as I saw a stampede of kids running on a huge mat. They were mostly boys and only a handful of girls. A sweaty coach came running towards us and handed me a pair of worn out wrestling shoes.