Ahmed Elghawy is a second year medical student at NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. He also started the wrestling club at NSU. He feels that, through wrestling, students can learn a sense of hard work and dedication and implement it into all aspects of their lives.
A few days ago, someone asked me how the wrestling club at NSU was started. I was asked if I was willing to share my answer with this newspaper. I said, “Sure, I’d love to,” thinking that the answer was fairly simple and straightforward. But the more I thought about it, I realized that I couldn’t really delve into this origin story without discussing my previous experiences with wrestling, what those experiences meant to me and how I’ve used them to shape the club into what it is today. So here goes nothing.
I come from a really small town outside of Philadelphia, where everyone pretty much knows everyone else by name and where people are very passionate about sports. Some of Pennsylvania’s biggest claims-to-fame are its outstanding high school and college wrestling programs. Pennsylvania eclipses Ohio and Iowa as possibly the best wrestling state in the country.
That being said, I was an average wrestler at best. I never won any big titles or headlined at any major tournaments. But, there were a few things that I shared with all my competitors across the state, including a sense of hard work and a never-give-up attitude, as well as passionate obligation to give back to the sport that had already given us so much. For this very reason, I decided to coach the sport while attending college full time and it became the reason why I decided that NSU needed a legitimate wrestling program.
I went around NSU’s campus asking people if there was a club or program where wrestlers could come to drill and work out, as well as a place for newcomers to learn the basics. At first, I found little success. But after months of looking, I discovered NSU’s mixed martial arts club, known as MMA Club. My excitement was palpable, until I saw that the club was highly disorganized, had no recognition from students and provided little-to-no guidance for new members from the executive board.
I knew that I had to become involved in the club. I used my experiences as a high school wrestling coach to add an element of structure to the practices through instruction and conditioning. As MMA’s unofficial teacher, I made it my mission to increase the club’s membership, through advertising it as a place where former wrestlers could rekindle their love of the sport and where newcomers would be welcomed.
Although this new mission was successful to a certain extent, I felt that I could do so much more as a member of the executive board. After being elected president of MMA, I changed its name to the Nova Wrestling Club, rewrote our constitution to include NSU alumni — who are often interested in returning to a sport that they had not visited since their high school days, and added a Brazilian jiu jistu component, which is currently led by Alain Chamoun, a purple belt in jiu jistu.
I also ordered new cleaning supplies for our wrestling mats to prevent possible skin infections, created flyers and t-shirts to increase awareness of the club around campus and helped raise over $250 toward the 2020 Legacy Scholarship. My clubmates and I even filmed a highlight video demonstrating the instructional, technical qualities involved in wrestling and Brazilian jiu jitsu. Most importantly, we’ve made sure to instill a sense of hard work and discipline in our members through the rigor of our practices.
From day one, it has been my hope that the work ethic being taught at NSU’s wrestling program would influence our members — not just on the mats, but also in their classrooms, workplaces and homes. What we teach here, in addition to technique and conditioning, is how to become a responsible young adult who contributes back to the community.
We teach our members how to win with humility and lose with dignity, to actively seek improvement on a daily basis, and to understand that temporary setbacks are constructive and that any goal can be achieved with enough hard work. This is what our club is all about.
Looking back on this year, I would say that this club has accomplished everything I hoped it would. But that does not mean we could not improve; there is always room for that.
