A local boy brought home a silver medal from a national wrestling competition last weekend, beating out more than 30 other competitors.
Austin Tremblay, a Grade 10 student at R.F. Staples, represented Westlock at the National Wrestling Championships in Essex Ontario last weekend, and up until the 58 kg category’s gold-medal match, he went undefeated.
Prior to the tournament, he didn’t really think he’d do as well as he did, though – he has only been wrestling competitively since last January.
“I was just going to try my hardest and see what happened,” he said. “I was hoping I’d do good.”
He wrestled a total of seven matches, easily winning them. It wasn’t until the final match, though, that he ran into problems.
“I was really nervous for that match. I could have done better than I did,” he said.
He lost the match by points, getting out-wrestled in the first two rounds, so it didn’t even go to a third.
Nonetheless, he said he was proud to have done as well as he did, as making it to the gold-medal match is no small feat.
“It was pretty exciting. Semi-finals was more important than finals for me; if I lost semi-finals I’d probably have been screwed for the rest of the tournament,” he said.
Coach Jessie Norton said she wasn’t too surprised that he did as well as he did, because of his dedication and commitment to the sport.
“We were confident that he’d come up with something,” she said. “He obviously did really well. He collected himself and calmed himself down when he had to.”
Three wrestlers that Norton coaches qualified to go to the tournament, but Tremblay was the only one who did. His hard work was undoubtedly contributed to his success.
“His love and his commitment to wrestling has helped him,” Norton said. “He’s a strong wrestler and has a commitment and love for it, and that gets him pretty far.”
Tremblay won’t just be taking it easy until next season starts up, however. He will spend much of his summer honing his skills.
“I have wrestling all throughout the summer, lots of camps and stuff,” he said. “I’ll be back wrestling next year.”
He is also looking forward to trying out for Team Alberta on May 14, to see if he can earn a spot at the Western Canada Summer Games, which runs in Kamloops, B.C. this August.
As he is still relatively young with two more years of high-school level wrestling to go, there’s a good chance he will bring home more medals in the future.
