Local wrestlers have been busy this month competing in a couple competitions and have brought home a lot of hardware.
Five local and area high schools — Peacock, Central, Cornerstone, Riverview and Assiniboia had wrestlers competing at two different tournaments and many placed well, especially the novice athletes.
“We’ve been to a couple pre-season tournaments, but this is the first real big tournament for a lot of our novice wrestlers, but this is where they see the talented wrestlers,” said coach Rob Villeneuve. “Our high school program has a lot of novice wrestlers, so we are just trying to build them up. They are all learning from the ground up and we can see that they are getting the basics down. It gives the coaches a good sign of where we need to go and what we need to do to help them improve.”
The wrestlers first participated in the O’Neill Titan Classic wrestling tournament at the beginning of the month in Regina and brought home 16 medals.
“We were impressed with the results and Moose Jaw always does well at tournaments. For our wrestlers, we have high expectations for them once they have been wrestling for two years with us,” he stated. “For the novice wrestlers, just getting out on that mat is the obstacle. When they can do that, then we can take the next steps for them to improve.”
Just last weekend, the athletes were back in action, this time in Saskatoon for the Western Canada high school tournament. The competition level was high as more than 800 wrestlers attended the tournament. There was only 30 local athletes that went, but they brought home 19 medals and everyone placed in the top 10. Peacock elite boys also won a silver medal as a team.
“In a tournament with 800 wrestlers and Peacock was able to pick up second place for the boys team, that is super impressive,” he said. “Next year, we are going for first place.”
For more on this story and full results, check out Wednesday's edition of the Times-Herald.
