My cousin Michael Boutrous when he was three years old at mat side during a Bismarck High School wrestling match of his brother Steven's. Two photographs from Steven's Bismarck High School wrestling days are below.

A very nice memento from United States Senator from North Dakota, Quentin Burdick, that was sent to Michael's father Floyd Boutrous.

Steven sent me this note after seeing the images I planned to post here and I feel the words go well with these photographs. Steven writes:

Not sure if you know the story behind all this, but I was so dead set on winning the state championship title in wrestling that I opted out of High School football for fear of getting hurt.

Dad was so bummed because he loved football so much and wanted nothing more than to watch me play, but he ended up accepting my position. That is until my senior year when mom came up to me and mentioned how much it would mean to my dad if I played my senior year. Of course I said no, but the more I got to thinking and feeling guilty, I joined the team.

And the craziest part about it is that we won the state championship that year, something that hadn’t been done for decades. Incredible and even more incredible was three months later I won the wrestling championship and three months after that I won the Teenage Upper Midwest body building contest. So it all came around and my dad was happy and that means a lot to me.

Thanks goes to Steven's brother Michael for the photographs and the newspaper clippings below.