A Wrestling Weekend

The 27th Annual King’s-Edgehill Invitational Wrestling Tournament on Saturday was another resounding success. Over 70 wrestlers from Nova Scotia came to our School to spend the day in stiff competition in our Ted Canavan Athletic Centre. Successes of various kinds were had all-round, but our Highlanders fared particularly well.

The King’s-Edgehill team, made up mostly of student-athletes who had never wrestled before, provided 10 competitors to the tournament. Our boys team lost a first-place finish by one point after some heroic performances. Quentin Knauf ‘23, Nate Montgomery ‘23, Levi Spence ‘23, and Yuta Takahashi ‘24 decided to lend the tenacity and physicality they learned on the rugby pitch to the wrestling mat. Every one of them performed well in particularly tough weight categories against experienced opponents. Warren Ma ‘24, Verneri Metsahuone ‘23, and rookie Declan Morris-Schwarz ‘23 also put the skills they have been working on for the past two months to good use in their matches by trying new things and working on their favorite moves. Giacomo Pogliani ‘27, our only junior, had very physically mature opponents, but he proved he has the best ankle pick in the tournament. He has more potential than most juniors we have ever seen. Rookie Lauren Boon ‘23 was our only female wrestler. She came second place in her weight category by learning from her mistakes in her first match to win via a pin in her second. Finally, team captain August Henrici ‘23 had the best performance of the day when he wrestled very technical matches in the 92-kilogram class to earn several pins and the gold medal.

A wrestling tournament is a massive production requiring hard work and dedication from many people. We would like to extend a huge thank you to Charlie Brinston-Conway ’23 who spent all day taking amazing photographs and videos of our team; Head of School Joe Seagram, our wrestlers’ biggest fan who provided support and also took pictures; Jennie Weisner and her team for providing excellent care to our athletes in a rough sport; the maintenance staff for helping to provide the best facility in the province to hold a wrestling tournament; and our wrestlers for all of their hard work, on and off the mat. As always, a special thank you goes to Kim Walsh ‘79. For the 27th year, he was the driving force behind this tournament and the one who took on most of the work to make it go so well.

After Saturday’s event, we then hosted the Wrestling Nova Scotia (WNS) Provincial Club Championships on Sunday. We had over 100 wrestlers from Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, from athletes as young as nine years old to 27 years of age. A number of our competitors from the previous day withdrew due to injury or illness, so we had a very small team. We were fortunate to come up with some great performances from Giacomo Pogliani ‘27 (under-15, 92-kilogram class) won by a pin in 16 seconds, for second place. Nate Montgomery ‘23, in the toughest weight class over the two days, placed fourth in the WNS championships and scored big points on each of his competitors over the two days with a two-on-one arm throw on one and a double on another. Ross Traves ‘15 (KES co-captain) was representing the Windsor Mat Kings (WMK our KES club team) and won the senior male 71-kilogram class, with Verneri Metsahuone ’23 placing third. Yuta Takahashi ’24 placed third (under-19, 65-kilogram class) and gained immeasurable experience as a rookie just like Declan, who, in both tournaments, and was very close in any of his losses. Although Abby Mercer ‘23 won an auto-gold in her division, she wrestled two exhibition matches where she won the first by grand superiority and then wrestled a 23-year-old ex-national champion for her second match, which was an excellent learning experience.

A very special thank you to the many volunteers running clocks, recording videos, and to the girls rugby team for providing canteen services on Saturday.

We will be taking Declan, Giacomo, Levi, Yuta and Verneri to compete in Fredericton at the Leo Hayes High School Tournament and the Eastern Canadian Club championships this weekend over the break. They will also get a chance to watch the University of New Brunswick tournament on Saturday morning.