LJ wrestling: Beans and baloney

By Ed Piper

Steve Naitoh, who weighs 223 pounds, took a burrito and actually pounded it down with his hand.

Mind you, he wasn't being unruly or outrageous. Just a big kid, a ninth-grader wrestler, actually, "funning" with his teammates from the La Jolla High squad.

Naitoh, who Viking head coach Kellen Delaney agrees "has had some success this year", had a cool book with him. A visitor asked what it was.

"Handbook of Chemistry and Physics", 37th Edition," said Naitoh, showing his conversant the cover. "We got it for a dollar at a garage sale. It has really cool stuff in it."

Like what?

"Gravity, Latitude, and Longitude," he showed a section. Yeah, okay...

"981. Gravity 9.81 meters per second squared," the apparent brainiac said. What is that? "Acceleration."

"The thing I like is that you can look at a book, instead of an electronic device. It's a nice break. I like it.

"You can look up stuff," he continued, flipping to different sections of the hardcover, fairly thick, worn volume. Let's say the book had some personality.

He was the only one at the Viking team picnic, here at Holtville High in the Imperial Valley, reading about acceleration. Everyone else was kibbitzing, or putting lunch meat to sliced bread, adding tomato and other fixin's, courtesy Walter Fairley, the long-time La Jolla administrator (now retired)/wrestling coach. (Fairley hadn't been able to attend the tournament, so fellow coach Ryan Lindenblatt had transported the cooler of sandwich-makings from San Diego to Holtville.)

Lindenblatt checked in. "Has he told you his turnaround from an F to a B+ in my Advanced Physics class, period 3?" Well, no.

Steve said things didn't go so well with the previous teacher, so in Lindenblatt's class, the grade reversal was total.

Earlier, at the picnic table in the quad of the Holtville High campus, the sun out but not boiling hot (as is normal later in the year in the El Centro area), Naitoh and teammate Ben Kasendorf were going at it. Figuratively.

"He ate all beans," said Naitoh, indicating Kasendorf (pronounced KASS-en-dorf; even the team's coaches mispronounce Ben's last name).

The night before, at the home of the family that hosted Joshua Jasso, Brendan Glenister, and Benji Torres, as well as Naitoh and Kasendorf--all the upper-weight wrestlers--the athletes had been treated to make-your-own burritos.

Kasendorf didn't add meat; only beans. That wasn't to Naitoh's approval. "Yuck, the beans were coming out of the burrito."

Ben: "My family is Jewish, so we usually try to eat kosher meat. So, instead, I was eating beans."

Steve: "He couldn't close the burrito."

Ben: "He pushed (my burrito) down, then smashed it."

Visitor: "Why did you do that?"

Steve: "Because I didn't like the way the beans were coming out of the tortilla."

Taking another tack, Naitoh about Kasendorf: "He snores."

Visitor: "How bad?"

Ben: "He (Steve) sleeps like this" (putting his arm on his shoulder--makes a sound).

Ben: "He ate six burritos."

Steve: "I ate four burritos. Only one of the four had two tortillas."

Joshua: "He ate four hamburgers."

Steve: "They weren't really hamburgers."