Zamoras much more than a wrestling family

I’ve never served, but I do agree that a life lived with honor, integrity and character is a life well lived.

The thing I’ve discovered about the game called wrestling is that it’s so much more than six minutes in the circle. There’s a lot of life lessons to be learned with the discipline it takes. It’s also a family tradition. In a lot of cases it involves fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins.

I covered the Feist brothers a few years back when they led Sandpoint, Idaho to back-to-back Idaho state championships. On the mat, they were tenacious, but the best Feist stories were the wrestling matches out in the backyard. There was one time when they got to scuffling in the living room and the fish aquarium was turned over.

Maybe one of the strangest events I’ve ever seen was in 2002 when Chris wrestled his younger brother Luke for the 4A state championship. Since it was two Sandpoint guys, brothers nonetheless, there were no coaches in the chairs. There was a quiet hush in the crowd. How do you root for one or the other, or both for that matter. Chris won his first state championship that day, beating the defending state champion. Luke ended up going to Stanford where his 74 college wins puts him ninth on the Cardinal all-time rankings.

He called one day to let me know he was in same dorm that Tiger Woods stayed in during his time at Stanford. “Dude, sneak down the hall and grab me a chunk of carpet or something from the room,” I usually try to wait a couple of years before I get them in trouble. But this is Tiger Woods.

I ran into that same spirit the other day at the Links at Moses Pointe when the Zamora brothers came back to play in the Moses Lake wrestling fundraiser golf tournament. The big dog Joey (1984-86) was in one cart with pops, Joe Sr. Former Washington 4A state champion Pete Zamora (1995-98) and his nephew Miquiyah, who is moving up the Eastern Washington all-time leading tackler list, where in the other.

I only rode around for a few holes with Team Zamora, but it didn’t take long to know this was a family with distinction and honor. Joey was a two-time 4A state runner-up and a captain on the state champion 1985 team. He later coached 13 years as an assistant for Ron Seibel (408-28-2).

Both John and Pete came through the ranks. I’m told there were more Zamoras that donned the maroon and gold over the years. Pete was the first in the family to win a state championship, although it was hard to imagine him wrestling at 115. If you wrestle with heart and live with honor and dignity, the rest will sort itself out, Pete said.

“Wrestling teaches us to be better humans,” he said. “It’s a sport that’s taught me a lot in life. There’s times in your life when you’re going to get knocked down and it’s how you come back after that that matters. That’s what wrestling taught me, how to come back like a champion.”

Where the sports pages are filled with one chucklehead story after another about athletes in trouble with the law. The Zamoras, like the rest of the kids that came through the Mo Lake program, walk with pride as well as live with honor.

Joey is a pastor at Worldwide Christian Center down in Pasco these days. We got to talking presidential politics, Lord knows why, but I said I didn’t like any of the candidates. Joey said something interesting.

“It’s not the elephant or the donkey that’s important, lamb will always guide you,” he said.

I think he’s onto something there. Tenacity in the circle, humility in all things outside. Joe Sr. was all smiles on that sunny day in the Columbia Basin. Golf with the boys, for everything else there’s Mastercard.

Rodney Harwood covers sports and business for the Columbia Basin Herald.