Kindness, politeness, resiliency and giving it your all. Those are four of the values that senior wrestler Nick Lee grew up living by.
"Kindness is huge, we weren't allowed to say any curse words. We weren't allowed to use any type of mean words. It is a powerful trait," Lee said.
Lee grew up in Evansville, Ind. with his two brothers, Joe and Matt, and parents Laura and Christopher. The Lee household fostered an active lifestyle.
Sports played a prominent role in Lee's childhood. He participated in many sports other than wrestling like soccer, football, basketball and even tai quan do.
"We played around with some different sports, but we just stuck with wrestling and it stuck with us,"
Lee said.
While Lee was growing up wrestling was the only sport that he could do competitively before second grade.
He was told by his parents that one day he came home with a flyer about wrestling and that soon after they went out and tried it.
"I was really bad at it for a long time, but they would send me to wrestling practice after school and that's how I got into the sport," Lee said.
As he got older he started to lead wrestling lessons for younger kids learning the sport. Doing this was very helpful for Lee because made him continue to focus on the basics.
"When wrestlers get older, the wrestling gets more complicated and sometimes you get away from the basics, which are the most important part," Lee said.
Eventually Lee stopped participating in sports other than wrestling. However, for him the other sports still had an impact on how he approaches wrestling today.
While wrestling can be considered to have a more individual aspect to it, the team aspect is still just as important.
"Playing those other sports gave me the idea of how important the team actually is and what leadership and teamwork looked like," Lee said.
Lee pointed out that his father being in the military also provided insight as to how important leadership and teamwork are.
His father was deployed a lot when he was really young in addition to when he was deployed to Afghanistan while Lee was in first grade.
"I have learned to let go of things you can't control. That's always a tough one for everybody, but understanding that you can't and you just need to focus on the things you can control," Lee said.
This can be seen for him as a wrestling aspect, but also just in general throughout life.
Having a solid community is something that Lee focuses on as well. For him it's sticking together with the people that mean the most to him no matter what.
Wrestling was and still is a tradition in his hometown and the high school the Lee brothers attended, which is where both his high school and club coaches wrestled too. It created a community of people that cared and pushed each other to improve as an athlete and a person.
"I think that the power of a community and everyone always having your back is pretty awesome," Lee said.
Part of a strong community is family. While Lee is thankful for all of his family members, his grandmother, Mary, is one person that sticks out to him as someone he looks up to.
When he was younger she was around consistently and helped out around the house. Even to this day Lee's grandmother is extremely involved in his life.
"She moved out here when I did and she comes to every match," Lee said. "She has been that person that comes to everything whenever she can."
His grandmother gave him good values at a young age which has helped him become the person that he is today.
Kindness, politeness, resiliency and giving it your all. Those are four of the values that Lee continues to live by to help him push through and be the best person he can be.
"When things get hard I hang in there and continue to do my best," Lee said.
