St Mary's Denis Orsar fighting to earn a pinfall win over his opponent during a 2024 wrestling tournament. (Nigel Maxwell/paNOW Staff)

By Nick Nielsen

Wrestling

Wrestling clubs around Saskatchewan prepare for Saskatchewan Try Wrestling Day

Sep 13, 2024 | 3:00 PM

The sport of wrestling is one that has been growing in popularity in Saskatchewan over the last decade, and Saskatchewan Wrestling is working to increase the influx into the sport with the first-ever Saskatchewan Try Wrestling Day on Saturday.

Wrestling rooms around the province are opening their doors to the public on Sept. 14 for young athletes to try their hand at the sport for the first time for free, including the Prince Albert Wrestling Club.

Roxanne Richards is the President of the Prince Albert Wrestling Club as well as the head coach of the St. Mary High School team. She said that this gives the kids 10 years old and over an opportunity to try the sport with experienced wrestlers training them.

“One of our ideas was to open up wrestling rooms all over the province on September 14th as an annual thing, and any clubs that want to be involved with it, we open up our club and it’s a free event. So they’re still covered under insurance because of this event.”

Not only is the Saskatchewan Try Wrestling Day an opportunity for young wrestlers to get their first try at the sport, it’s also an opportunity for experienced wrestlers to try their hand at coaching. While the number of wrestlers in the province has been growing steadily year after year, finding coaches has been a struggle for teams around the province.

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“The higher level athletes will be there to help run the camp. They’re going to be there to help answer questions from any parents that might have questions if they’re there, answer questions for the kids and just to help the younger ones see what PA Wrestling Club is like as a whole and as a family because we do travel a lot together and we spend a lot of time together. So it’s a pretty close knit group for sure.”

While many of the team sports kids play in offer a way for kids to learn how to work and grow as a team with their fellow athletes as they perform on the field together, wrestling offers a different challenge. While most sports see the individuals work to make the team better, in wrestling the team works to make the individuals better as they head out on to the mat alone with nothing but a coach sitting in their corner.

Wrestling has been growing in Saskatchewan over the last decade, and Prince Albert tends to be a hot spot according to Richards. With another team at Carlton High School, the team from St. Mary’s is the largest in the province outside of Saskatoon and Regina, and Prince Albert’s club wrestling team is the only team practicing the throw heavy Greco-Roman style of wrestling.

“It’s constantly getting bigger and bigger. We are we are one of the better teams in the province as far as caliber, of course it’s really hard to compete against the Jr. Huskies in Saskatoon, but we usually hit second or third throughout the province. We also have the only athletes in the province that compete in Greco-Roman, so we had a couple of kids get medals at nationals this past year with Greco-Roman as well. That’s one of our focuses is to keep Greco-Roman alive in our province.

While the focus for this year’s first ever Saskatchewan Try Wrestling Day is on the ages 10 and up, there is already a growing interest for younger wrestlers to come in too. Richards said that if this year goes well, they may open it up to younger athletes in the future.

“I think for now we’re we are going to focus on ages 10 and up, but we’ve already had some eight and nine year olds that are asking and showing some interest, it just depends on the coaches because we do have some new coaches coming on, so depending on the coaches availability, we may actually open it up to a little bit younger.”

For more information about Prince Albert Wrestling Club’s session for Try Wrestling day, you can contact Roxanne Richards at 306-961-5829 or by email at roxanneriachards2007@gmail.com. The session will run from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Prince Albert Wrestling Club at 717 McArthur Drive.

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com