Mary Christen is a wrestling mom. She raises money for sweatshirts. She attends end-of-the-year potlucks. And she draws Marvel Comic-inspired heroes to generate enthusiasm for what she considers an underdog sport. During the wrestling season, her often-colorless drawings adorn the hallways and lockers of Annandale and Maple Lake schools in poster-sized prominence. Whether it is the starkness of the line drawing – done entirely with black Sharpie marker – or the grim, heroic faces of the subjects themselves that is so alluring, she doesn’t know. But they certainly draw the attention she was looking for. “My kids come home and say, ‘You should see all the people gathered around your poster.’ That’s my inspiration,” Christen said. Last year she did 25 drawings for the Annandale-Maple Lake Lightning wrestling team and was rewarded with the satisfaction of seeing them end their season as runnerup to Litchfield in the section 5 2A tournament. It was the Lightning’s highest finish in the history of the school, but few people knew about it, she said. Christen’s oldest son, Scott, graduated from Annandale High School last spring. He was the first of the Christen clan to pick up the sport. “In the ninth grade, Dusty Nicka talked Scott into wrestling because he didn’t want to do it alone,” said Christen. “He absolutely loved it.”Her son Charlie, a junior, will wrestle at 171 pounds this winter. Believe it or not, before her sons got involved in wrestling, Christen wasn’t much of a sports fan. Wrestling, she said, is a particularly hard sport to watch because it is so individualized. It is especially hard, she said, to watch your own child out there on his own struggling in man-to-man combat. “The boys inspire me with how much respect they have for their teammates and their coaches. Wrestling has really opened my eyes to the spirit of the team,” she said. Not long after Christen got the idea to create posters she realized the first thing she had to do was get them noticed. They couldn’t be just another “Go Cardinal” poster hanging on a school locker. She needed subjects that stood out and at the same time represented the strength and heroism of the athletes. She has always been a Captain America fan and so she started working super heroes into her sketches. The Lightning colors are silver, white and black, which is why she does the posters without using color. Every once in a while she will throw in a yellow lightning bolt, a red cardinal or a green leprechaun just to add a bit of color. She starts by creating an outline with black marker, then she fills in the detail with loosely drawn lines. It’s a process her son Charlie jokingly refers to as scribbling. “To him I don’t draw,” she said. “I scribble.” The outcome is a stark representation of the struggle of the athlete. The posters went over so well last wrestling season that she decided to draw some for the football team as well. Those posters are more representative of real players. Ben Anderson’s famous tackle, which aired on KARE 11 TV, was the subject of her first drawing. Football players, she said, are easier to draw than wrestlers because their gear, helmets and face guards allow her to focus on something other than facial features. She can produce shadowy outlines and be all right. Wrestlers on the other hand provide room for more detail, which takes longer to draw. But she doesn’t often use real Cardinal athletes for her models. Usually she bases her drawings on photos she finds in sports magazines, although sometimes she takes her own pictures. Christen has always drawn, but in the past her subjects have always been geared more toward nature. She does a lot of animal artwork but also enjoys drawing cartoons for birthday party posters or cards. When she is not drawing, she is designing costumes or sewing them at Pricilla Mooseburger Originals, a costume shop in Maple Lake. Christen sees wrestling as one of those dwindling sports that is often overshadowed by more popular athletics like basketball. Part of her goal is to get other students to realize that wrestlers are doing big things too, she said. Already Christen has some new ideas for this wrestling season, which starts Thursday, Dec. 2, with a meet in Kimball. One of her aspirations is to make her drawings more realistic. She also wants to focus on giving recognition to athletes who may not be the stars of the team, but who do good things. “Last year A-ML placed second in sections, but not many people knew about it,” she said. “This is the only way I knew how to get it out there.”
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