Parker Lyden MN: Learn to Love the Fight
Parker Lyden MN – Learning to Love the Fight
By Bill X. Barron
To dedicate oneself to being the best at your age and weight is not the work of but one season. Indeed, it is a many-year journey where setbacks are your teachers and where challenges befriend you.
For one such journeyman, now a decade in the making, Minnesota’s Parker Lyden of Forest Lake’s Pinnacle Wrestling Club, at age 14 has learned that wrestling teaches you “to deal face-to-face with failure and adversity.”
Pinnacle’s motto is “Love the Fight.” Parker states, “I really fell in love with the grind and battles of this sport. I continue to learn from my losses and shortcomings. I enjoy the challenge of turning these into future opportunities for success.”
Parker’s dad Nick can attest to his unerring dedication, despite obstacles on and off the mat, and especially in the current setting where just finding a place to practice or compete is difficult. Just the same, Nick finds that “Parker is always asking where we can go next, getting up early to work out or lift, or looking for camps to attend.”
A recent RMN Cosmic Clash 15U 95-lb. champion, a 2-time USA Wrestling Folkstyle National runner-up, and a member of the Minnesota National Duals Team, Parker has discovered that “practice is the best way to prepare mentally and physically for the large events.”
In this freshman season, Parker will be lighter than the 106-lb. lightest weight class, yet he fully expects to be on the path toward multiple state championships, all the while “building the stepping stones” to compete at the Division I level.
Wrestling for the Lydens is ever so much a family affair, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather as well as several cousins who are currently competing in various regions of the state. Parker’s great uncle, Larry Lyden, was a 1968 USA Olympian in Greco-Roman.
Like Larry, Parker likes the ability to throw his opponent in Greco. At the 2019 Schoolboy National Duals, Parker hurt his shoulder early in the tournament, but Minnesota Coach Billy Pierce told Parker he believed, despite the hurt and pain, that Parker could again step out on that mat and battle for himself, his team, and state.
Parker teched his opponent in the next match and won his remaining matches that day, proving to himself that he could “block out the pain and mentally push himself further even when his body is hurting.”
Although the September Cosmic Clash was Parker’s first RMN event, he is already planning on the Freak Show in Idaho and the Monster Match in South Dakota. “Cosmic was run really well; even weigh-ins went smoothly.” For Parker, it is all about where he can best be challenged, and right now, it is in an RMN national event that has a huge draw from every state.
In the Cosmic Clash semis, Parker drew highly-regarded Ko’ji Campbell of Wisconsin. After seizing the initiative with a late first-period underhook lateral drop that put Ko’ji to his back, Parker dominated the rest of the match, earning a 15-5 major decision. Unlike those who duck ranked opponents in order to earn a higher place, Parker “looks forward to the challenge.”
Mentors and Pinnacle coaches like Olympic Greco silver medalist Brandon Paulson and NCAA Champ Jared Lawrence (a Minnesota Gopher) have stressed that “the results you earn are determined by the work you are willing to put in.” Dad Nick echoes: “He has really taken to his craft; Parker is altogether dedicated in the pursuit of his passion.”
Coach Jared Lawrence started Pinnacle with the premise: "There is no shortcut to any place worth going." As Jared relates: “This story was told to me by my college coach. There are two paths to the top of a mountain. They both have rewards. One path is easy; its only reward is that it is easy.”
Committed to “be the best at everything I do,” straight-A student Parker sees himself becoming an anesthesiologist “since I enjoy science, mathematics, and physics.” Similarly, the experimentalist in him “studies video to identify the faults that prompt me to excel even more. When I struggle, I also see the most growth.”
While by most accounts, the sport of wrestling humbles you, Parker has developed the ability to shift the paradigm by converting every obstacle into an opportunity. “I love the fact that in wrestling, there is no one you can rely upon but yourself.”