MAKING WEIGHT

THE COST OF GREATNESS

Sixteen years of sacrifice.
One moment that decides everything.
And the silence that follows when the dream finally ends.

Cole Hendricks has spent his life chasing perfection on the wrestling mat. From a middle school basement that smells of rubber and bleach to sold-out arenas under blinding lights, every ounce of his identity has been forged through discipline, pain, and relentless ambition.

Wrestling gave him clarity.
It gave him purpose.
It taught him how to endure.

But it never taught him how to stop.

As Cole rises through the ranks—outworking, outlasting, and outgrowing nearly everyone in his path—he learns that greatness always demands payment. Weight must be cut. Relationships must be sacrificed. Injuries must be ignored. And every victory only sharpens the hunger for the next one.

At the highest level of competition, where Olympic dreams are made and broken in minutes, Cole finally faces the question he’s been avoiding since he was twelve years old:

Who are you when the thing that defined you is gone?

Making Weight is a powerful, intimate novel about obsession, inherited expectation, and the quiet devastation of giving everything to a dream that may never love you back. Told with rare authenticity and emotional precision, it explores the hidden cost of excellence—not just in sports, but in any life driven by the need to be extraordinary.

This is not a story about winning.

It’s a story about what winning takes—and what it takes away.

Perfect for readers who loved:

• The Art of Fielding

• Friday Night Lights

• Literary novels about ambition, identity, and burnout

• Sports stories that go far beyond the game

If you’ve ever chased greatness…
If you’ve ever wondered when enough is enough…
If you’ve ever had to rebuild yourself after the dream ended…

Making Weight will stay with you long after the final page.

The most accurate wrestling novel I’ve read—and it’s not really about wrestling

This book nails the reality of wrestling: the grind, the weight cut, the injuries you pretend aren’t injuries, the loneliness of chasing perfection. But the real story is bigger—how ambition can become a cage, how “toughness” can turn into silence, and how hard it is to figure out who you are when the dream ends. If you wrestled—or competed seriously in anything—this will feel uncomfortably familiar in the best way.