No Limits, No Refunds

There are days where I don’t love covering wrestling.

The lack of funding. The lack of free time (it’s August, folks, and I have not been to the beach, other than as a chauffeur, once this calendar year). The things and people and life I sacrifice to do it the only way I know how, which is all out with whatever tools I have.

So, against that probably-only-in-my-mind grim backdrop, every now and again, the universe reminds me why I really should keep at it.

I don’t always get a look at every team’s Facebook pages in real time, so at first I almost glossed over a Lincoln post from earlier in the week. I was a little snoozy early this morning while watching my favorite English football team struggle much more than I would like for a season-opener.

But I saw it highlighted Class of 2018 alum Gus Altenburg, who’s been one of my most favorite people to cover since I’ve moved here. And that woke me up.

One of his best boyhood friends, Ben Strickland, did a 30-minute video documentary, posted on YouTube back in May, on Gus.

This video, entitled No Limits No Refunds, refers to a slogan that Gus and his parents use as a refrain to remind him — and, as you’ll see when you watch the video, all of us — that there should be no limits to your achievement, no matter what obstacles stand in the way. That there are no refunds on each day, as you don’t or can’t have a do-over.

That’s the same whether the day is a “bad” one or a “good” one.

After graduation from Lincoln in 2018, Gus attended Tallahassee Community College for two years and is currently at Florida Gulf Coast in Ft Myers, where he’s a senior. He majors in digital media design and marketing (Side note: maybe if I had the budget for it, I could hire him to help me for the website).

I have another reason for my interest in this video, not only in the curiosity of seeing a young man overcoming autism to qualify for states, which is certainly reason enough.

My third son is on the autism spectrum as well. We didn’t really know, all throughout his growing-up years, and those of you who’ve had your kids mis-diagnosed with this or that disorder can relate to me on that. There are analogous situations that I see, now, having watched the video and seeing how Gus saw and overcame certain things and seeing how his parents both challenged and supported him, to those situations I encountered with my autistic son, some in which I had some success and some where I fell short.

So I urge you to watch this today. I urge you to be the proactive parent that Gus’s parents were as he made and makes his way through the world, to be the proactive parent that I wish I had been to a son who is trying to make his way through the world, 1200 miles away. I urge you to be the proactive friend like Ben and Tyler Strickland, a friend to the kids who are different, to learn from their stories, and to encourage them as they walk their paths.

You can watch the video HERE –> GUS ALTENBURG

There are days where I don’t love covering wrestling.

Today is a day to remember why I do.