BY JANAE JOACHIM
Sue Scandlon, a Wadsworth community member and mother to a Wadsworth High School wrestler, wrote a 96 page children’s book titled Cole’s Journey into Wrestling that was published in July 2020. It follows a little boy who joins the wrestling team and learns lessons about the sport and life.
Scandlon started writing the book at the end of her son Logan’s sophomore year at Wadsworth High in 2019.
“I started thinking, ‘Well, he’s going to be a senior pretty soon, so I want to do something to keep wrestling alive in our family’,” said Scandlon.
Additionally, through her years of experience in the sport of wrestling, she was aware of the amount of people who misunderstood it and wanted to change that.
“It is such a great sport that I wanted to do something to explain it more while letting the kids have fun reading it,” said Scandlon.
Scandlon’s son Logan started wrestling 11 years ago, and at that time she knew nothing about the sport. She took coaching lessons and watched her husband coach in efforts to get a better understanding of it.
The sport of wrestling has had such a large impact on her family’s life and attitude by inspiring them to never quit. She has an admiration for that attitude and hopes to emphasize it in the book.
“It has taught me that you need to be not only strong physically but mentally [and] spiritually. Everything kind of goes together, in my opinion, in the sport of wrestling,” said Scandlon.
In the book, the little boy Cole finds out after joining the wrestling team that his dad was a wrestler in high school and his mom was a stat girl. It not only tells his journey throughout the sport, but also key factors that anyone new to wrestling would need to know.
“It teaches from the very first practice, to how you get a spot on varsity with wrestle-offs to the first tournament. It goes over winning and losing and how you should act,” said Scandlon .
The back of the book contains important definitions to know and entails the uniform of a wrestler (headgear, singlet).
The whole process of writing took Scandlon a little over a year with the illustrations done by Haley Pickard, a Wadsworth graduate.
The book has been sold in 26 states and Scandlon has been interviewed on two different podcasts, Coach P’s Perspective and Ward Wrestling Live. She was also featured on Trackwrestling, the main website for all wrestling information and stats.
Scandlon plans on writing two to three more books (with the help of her son Logan) following Cole’s career in the sport as he enters junior high and high school. These books will show how wrestling, and the attitude it teaches, helps Cole get through life as it gets tougher.
“The older you get, you have more issues, and wrestling is going to help him get through,” said Scandlon .
Cole’s Journey into Wrestling can be bought on Amazon, on Scandlon’s website https://www.colesjourneyintowrestling.com/, or in Chatham’s General Store in Chatham, Ohio. Scandlon also sells the book herself at wrestling tournaments.
