A local athlete pinned down a spot Team Alberta for the coming Western Canada Summer Games, which will be held in Kamloops, B.C. this August.
Austin Tremblay, a Grade 10 student at R.F. Staples School and national silver-medallist wrestler, went to St. Albert May 14 for the tryouts, where he easily won his four matches.
“There was one match that was hard, but other than that it was pretty easy,” he said.
Tremblay, who had already won gold at the provincial tournament, said he easily pinned his first three matches; it was only the last match that gave him trouble, but beat his opponents in points and earned his spot on the team.
For all that was at stake, though, the tournament was a fairly small event.
“It wasn’t a big tournament, because only the people who think they can make the team go,” he said.
There were six wrestlers in his weight category, 63 kg, and Tremblay said he had no doubt he would be able to come out on top as he had already won provincials — even though he had to go up one weight category from the 58 kg he was wrestling all year.
“I had to go up for this tournament because I have to stay at that weight all summer,” he said. “My old weight class, which I’ve been wrestling at all year, I probably wouldn’t be able to stay at that weight all summer.”
Now that Tremblay has made the team, he said he would spend much of his summer focusing on training.
“Wrestling season is over, so I have to do a lot of stuff by myself,” he said. “Lots of running, and I have mats set up in my garage and people come over and wrestle sometimes.”
One of the reasons Tremblay likes wrestling, he said, is that it’s an individual sport so training by himself all summer shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
And if he does need a little help, he said he has many friends who are willing to come over and spar with him.
The Western Canada Summer Games will run from Aug. 5-14, with as many as 2,300 athletes aged 13-23 from the four western provinces and the three territories competing in 19 different summer sports.
The games were held in Strathcona County, Alta. In 2007, and are expected to return to Alberta in 2015.
