Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum was rumbling with 465 athletes competing in the provincial high school wrestling championships from Feb 23-25.
The West Coast sent 10 athletes to compete at the event and coach Mike Rhodes said “they all put in a tremendous effort” throughout their matches.
“I’m so proud of how our kids competed. Win or lose they left everything they had out on the mat. They held their heads up high and wrestled with strength, both in muscle and character. They really did show that they are all truly warriors,” Rhodes told the Westerly News via email.
Three Warriors managed to rumble their way onto the podium with Caitlyn Midlane finishing 5th and Olivia and Wyatt Rhodes each earning silver medals.
“Caitlyn has not been feeling 100 percent for a couple of weeks now and for her to suck it up and fight her way onto the podium was pretty impressive. I know she’s looking forward to getting healthy so she can compete at her best and improve on that showing for next year,” Rhodes said.
He said it was only the second time in the school’s history to have two Warriors reaching the finals in the same year and that both Olivia and Wyatt Rhodes “each worked their way through a very strong field of competitors” to earn silvers.
“Olivia and Wyatt had fantastic weekends,” he said. “Each of them had to work very hard to get to the finals. They both had to defeat wrestlers that they had previously lost to earlier in the year and they stepped up to the challenge and made it. Those victories were not earned alone though. It’s the support, training time, and work put in with teammates, coaches and each other that got them to this point.”
Olivia Rhodes told the Westerly that the “whole trip was awesome” and created lielfong memories.
“We grew so much as a team because we had so many emotional matches,” she said. “There was a lot of crying, but happy tears. There was a lot of happy tears going on…but then once you get on that mat, it all has to go away and you get hugs every time you finish win or lose…It’s just so competitive and tough. It takes courage even just to step on the mat and everyone knows that.”
Olivia won gold at last year’s provincials and said she was proud of the way she performed this year.
“I feel like I wrestled really strong. I definitely wrestled my best out of the whole year in that tournament, even though I did lose, I still wrestled my hardest…I couldn’t have done anything different so I was really proud of myself actually” she said.
“After my first two matches, I definitely had better confidence in myself and then, going into the final match, I knew it was going to be a hard match, but I knew I could do it and I had the potential of winning. That’s not what happened, but I had a lot more confidence in myself going into the final match.”
The team will now head back to Vancouver for the national championships on March 23.
Olivia earned a 4th place finish at last year’s nationals, as well as second in the greco roman event, and she’s hoping to improve on those results this time around.
“I hope I do better than I did last year, obviously,” she said noting she’ll face a tougher task this year as she is in Grade 11 and will be wrestling Grade 12’s. “I think I can still hold my ground.”
She thanked her teammates for continuing to buoy her success.
“We’re a pretty strong team. We place in a lot of tournaments and we also are very respectful in what we do and we present ourselves very well. We’re a team and we show that,” she said. “My teammates mean a lot to me. They help me in all my matches. They help me emotionally, I go out there sometimes freaking out, but they calm me down. We always warm up as a team and we cheer as a team and we’re just one big happy family.”
andrew.bailey@westerlynews.ca
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