“For me, it’s 2020 Tokyo. That’s my goal.”
For some people, Olympic ambitions are sort of a pie-in-the-sky goal, but with Haley Heffel, one gets the impression it’s all but a certainty.
The 18-year-old Grade 12 student, who hails from the Jarvie area but is now living in Edmonton, is already competing with the University of Alberta team against athletes who have years of experience on her — and she’s not just holding her own she’s bringing home the hardware.
Just this past weekend, she returned from the Guelph Open, an international invitational tournament where she learned what it was to compete against an Olympian.
“I saw she had the U.S. singlet on, so I knew she was pretty good, but when I stepped on the mat I saw she had the Olympic rings tattooed behind her ear,” Heffel said. “But when you’re on the mat you have to put that aside and just wrestle your heart out.”
And although she ultimately lost that match, it was by no means a blowout — 8-5 after the first round thanks to Heffel successfully throwing her opponent for four points. In the second round, though, she found herself pinned.
“That was a bit of a disappointment for me, I try not to get pinned,” she said. “That’s my own personal goal.”
After winning every other match she had at that tournament, however, including her own teammate and another American, she still came away with a bronze medal.
The previous competitions Heffel’s taken part in this season have all also resulted in podium finishes.
The first tournament of the season in Calgary last October saw Heffel lose in the final to Justine Bouchard, a high-ranking Canadian, to win a silver medal.
“At the time, that was the highest I’d ever got in a university tournament,” she said. “It was a good match. Obviously I lost, but it was a learning experience.”
She ended up with a gold medal at a tournament in Winnipeg in late November, before heading down to San Francisco for a training camp and tournament in between Christmas and New Year’s.
“There, I lost by one point against the girl who was ranked number-one in the nation in that weight class,” Heffel said.
January has been busy as well, with the University of Alberta’s home tournament earlier this month — another gold medal — before the Guelph Open this past weekend.
And it’s not over for her yet. Her team is working towards the CanWest and CIS university competitions, which Heffel can’t compete in because she’s still in high school, but it will still mean ramping up her training.
Her own goal this year is to win the junior/senior nationals, which will be held in Guelph in mid-March.
“Nationals is my main goal; that’s how you make the national team,” she said.
As for the high-school competitions — Heffel is eligible to compete because she’s still in Grade 12, she hasn’t even decided if she’ll bother.
“Last year I went the whole year without having a point scored against me, except one where I stepped out of the ring,” she said, noting her skills have developed significantly since then.
Furthermore, she’s coaching her school’s wrestling team and isn’t sure she wants to compete and coach at the same time — besides which, provincials is a goal for many wrestlers who want to get scouted by universities and Heffel already has a pile of offers including some scholarship potentials.
“There’s so much to consider when you’re looking at universities,” she said. “It’s tempting to just go with the one that gives you the most money, but you have to look at the wrestling program and where that can lead.”
And since she’s set on her goal of making the Canadian Olympic Team in 2020, that will factor heavily into her decision.
Not bad for an 18-year-old with humble origins in a small farming community north of Westlock.
