Post by oleary on Mar 4, 2008 22:23:58 GMT -5
High school wrestlers grappling for all-Ontario glory
Posted By By Dan Plouffe
Posted 5 days ago
Four Port Hope High School (PHHS) wrestlers square off against the best in the province at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) Wrestling Championships starting today at Hagersville Secondary School near Caledonia.
Three Grade 12s - Francis Dobri, Matt Vetor and Colleen O'Leary - as well as Grade 9 rookie Aaron Brown, all won the right to compete at OFSAA thanks to what coach Eric Roberts called "phenomenal" performances at last week's Central Ontario Championships.
Wrestlers from across Ontario will pose a stiff challenge to Port Hope's Spartans. The PHHS grapplers hope to make it through Day 1 to the final day of the double-elimination tournament Friday. Each weight category should feature about 32 athletes.
"(OFSAA)'s a real eye-opener," said O'Leary, who competed at three previous Ontario championships. "Around here, we're pretty good. At the local tournaments, we usually win, and then when we go to all-Ontarios, you really have to work and when you get your butt handed to you, you're like, 'Wow, maybe I'm not so good.'"
Winning the Central Ontario Championships is quite the accomplishment on its own, Roberts noted. He said he considers OFSAA "probably the toughest competition that most kids are ever in" - even compared to events they attend as members of the Kawartha Olympic Wrestling Club, such as the junior national championships.
Roberts hopes his seniors' previous big-competition experience will come in handy. But since starting the PHHS program he's lived through plenty of unexpected happenings - such as the athlete who came down with chicken pox after the weigh-in - so he knows nothing is a guarantee.
"Boy, I would like to see one of them in the finals," Roberts said. "Will that happen? I don't know."
What Roberts hopes his athletes get most out of wrestling is just the experience it offers. He often recruits smaller kids to join the Spartans since the sport offers them the chance to compete against others of the same size in lower weight classes.
"I couldn't have played basketball in high school and I couldn't play football because I was too small," Roberts explained. "But I could wrestle, so I wanted other kids that were like me to have an opportunity."
Sport was a tool to keep Roberts on track while he was in high school in Oshawa; now he's the librarian at PHHS.
"For me, if I hadn't wrestled, I probably wouldn't have finished high school," Roberts said. "In Grade 11 and Grade 12, I was going through a difficult time in adolescence. That just kept me going to school, because I could wrestle. That was one of the things I did that gave me some self-esteem."
The PHHS wrestlers have been training since Thanksgiving - two or three times a week with the school, and twice more with the Kawartha club. Between scholastic and community tournaments, one competition, if not two, takes place almost every weekend.
The constant grind hasn't killed the sport for any of the three senior competitors- they all hope to continue wrestling after high school graduation. O'Leary's got her eye on the University of Guelph program, while Dobri often sports a Brock Badgers T-shirt.
It's quite a change in focus for Dobri, who didn't win a match in his first year and started wrestling simply to help him with rugby, his main sport back in Grade 9.
"My gym class TA said a lot of the stuff you use in wrestling you can convert to rugby, so he got me into wrestling, and I decided to do wrestling instead of rugby in the end," Dobri said.
Roberts has been very impressed by the level of dedication shown by his crop of OFSAA athletes.
O'Leary, for her part, hopes all the hours of training and preparation pay off at all-Ontarios.
"This is the one you have to work for all year," O'Leary noted.
Posted By By Dan Plouffe
Posted 5 days ago
Four Port Hope High School (PHHS) wrestlers square off against the best in the province at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) Wrestling Championships starting today at Hagersville Secondary School near Caledonia.
Three Grade 12s - Francis Dobri, Matt Vetor and Colleen O'Leary - as well as Grade 9 rookie Aaron Brown, all won the right to compete at OFSAA thanks to what coach Eric Roberts called "phenomenal" performances at last week's Central Ontario Championships.
Wrestlers from across Ontario will pose a stiff challenge to Port Hope's Spartans. The PHHS grapplers hope to make it through Day 1 to the final day of the double-elimination tournament Friday. Each weight category should feature about 32 athletes.
"(OFSAA)'s a real eye-opener," said O'Leary, who competed at three previous Ontario championships. "Around here, we're pretty good. At the local tournaments, we usually win, and then when we go to all-Ontarios, you really have to work and when you get your butt handed to you, you're like, 'Wow, maybe I'm not so good.'"
Winning the Central Ontario Championships is quite the accomplishment on its own, Roberts noted. He said he considers OFSAA "probably the toughest competition that most kids are ever in" - even compared to events they attend as members of the Kawartha Olympic Wrestling Club, such as the junior national championships.
Roberts hopes his seniors' previous big-competition experience will come in handy. But since starting the PHHS program he's lived through plenty of unexpected happenings - such as the athlete who came down with chicken pox after the weigh-in - so he knows nothing is a guarantee.
"Boy, I would like to see one of them in the finals," Roberts said. "Will that happen? I don't know."
What Roberts hopes his athletes get most out of wrestling is just the experience it offers. He often recruits smaller kids to join the Spartans since the sport offers them the chance to compete against others of the same size in lower weight classes.
"I couldn't have played basketball in high school and I couldn't play football because I was too small," Roberts explained. "But I could wrestle, so I wanted other kids that were like me to have an opportunity."
Sport was a tool to keep Roberts on track while he was in high school in Oshawa; now he's the librarian at PHHS.
"For me, if I hadn't wrestled, I probably wouldn't have finished high school," Roberts said. "In Grade 11 and Grade 12, I was going through a difficult time in adolescence. That just kept me going to school, because I could wrestle. That was one of the things I did that gave me some self-esteem."
The PHHS wrestlers have been training since Thanksgiving - two or three times a week with the school, and twice more with the Kawartha club. Between scholastic and community tournaments, one competition, if not two, takes place almost every weekend.
The constant grind hasn't killed the sport for any of the three senior competitors- they all hope to continue wrestling after high school graduation. O'Leary's got her eye on the University of Guelph program, while Dobri often sports a Brock Badgers T-shirt.
It's quite a change in focus for Dobri, who didn't win a match in his first year and started wrestling simply to help him with rugby, his main sport back in Grade 9.
"My gym class TA said a lot of the stuff you use in wrestling you can convert to rugby, so he got me into wrestling, and I decided to do wrestling instead of rugby in the end," Dobri said.
Roberts has been very impressed by the level of dedication shown by his crop of OFSAA athletes.
O'Leary, for her part, hopes all the hours of training and preparation pay off at all-Ontarios.
"This is the one you have to work for all year," O'Leary noted.