5 Years Later: Wrestling, Resilience, and a Fil-Am Journey
The One Photo of My Son That People Keep Finding
Five years on from a wrestling tournament at Mission San Jose High in Fremont — a Benicia High senior season, and the Tagalog word for the kind of endurance that never announces itself.
I have taken thousands of photographs of my children. This is the one people keep finding.
It goes up months ago as a single frame with a few lines under it, the kind of post I make without expecting anything, and it climbs. Not because of anything I wrote. People are searching for a high school wrestling tournament in Fremont, and this is what comes back. Parents looking for a kid who wrestled that season. Alumni. Somebody who was on the other side of that mat and wanted to see it again.
That tells me something worth writing down. The stories nobody is competing to tell are the ones our families actually go looking for. A gym in Fremont on a Saturday in January is not covered by anyone. It is covered by the parents in the bleachers with their phones up, and by whichever one of us brought a real camera.
What the photograph is actually of
Jian wrestled for Benicia High. This was his senior season, and the tournament was at Mission San Jose, which meant the drive down 680 in the dark and a full day in a gym that smelled like every gym.
Wrestling is the least sentimental sport there is. There is no bench to hide on, no teammate to pass to, no way to be quietly carried by a better roster. Six minutes, one other person, and a number at the end. You either found something in yourself or you did not, and everybody watching knows which.
Five years have gone by. He is out of the house. The season is a line on a transcript nobody will ever ask him about. And the thing that was actually being built in that gym — the part that had nothing to do with the score — is the only part that made it out with him.
Filipinos have their own grappling tradition. Dumog is the wrestling component of Filipino martial arts — close-quarters control, off-balancing, and leverage against a bigger opponent. It is rarely what people picture when they hear FMA, which tends to conjure blades and sticks. But the empty-hand grappling was always there, and a Fil-Am kid in a Northern California high school singlet is closer to an inherited tradition than anyone in that gym would have guessed.
tiyaga
tee-YAH-gah
Persistence. Staying with a hard thing long after the feeling that started it has worn off. English reaches for grit, which sounds like clenched teeth and effort. Tiyaga is quieter than that. It is the person who keeps showing up on the ordinary Tuesday, when no one is watching and nothing is at stake. Our family name is built on the same idea in a different language.
Whose land the gym is on
I have used the phrase Turtle Island on this site before, and it deserves more than a gesture. It is an Indigenous name for this continent, and if I am going to use it about my son's life here, I should be specific about where here is.
Benicia sits on Patwin land. Fremont, where that tournament was held, sits on Ohlone land. A Filipino family drove from one to the other on a January morning, on a highway laid across territory that was never ceded, to watch a boy wrestle. Naming that is not a formality. It is the difference between a slogan and an acknowledgment.
Belated
This started as a birthday post and got away from me, which is how most of the writing on this site happens.
Happy birthday, anak. Late, as usual. The photograph is still here, and now so is the reason it mattered.
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Founder & Editor
J.F.R. Perseveranda
J.F. (Jonjo) left the Philippines at age nine, spending a lifetime bridging the gap between his Marikina roots and his Chicago/Vallejo upbringing. A proud Hogan Spartan from East Vallejo and resident of LA/SF, he founded PinoyBuilt not just as a digital archive, but as a cultural compass for his three children to navigate their heritage, language, and identity with Pinoy Pride.
Updated 8/16/26.
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