When a family feud breaks out in the Giesbrecht home, the household pets likely scatter for cover.
The Giesbrechts have four wrestlers under one roof and the blame for that lies squarely on the shoulders of Dennis McCarthy, head coach of the Prince George Wrestling Club.
Amy Giesbrecht, 13, and her 14-year-old brother Zack are gearing up for their first competition in 2 ½ years, among four club members who will travel to Tsuut’ina Nation on the west side of Calgary for the Canadian championships, June 10-12.
Their younger siblings, 11-year-old Conner and nine-year-old Austin, also train with the Prince George club. Typically, Amy wrestles the other girls in the club but at Thursday’s practice she was the only female and had to tangle with her brother Zack.
“We wrestle at home, not exactly the fair way, but the sibling rivalry way, and we just wrestle on the hard floor and whoever wins…” Amy said. “It’s competitive, but fun.”
She sometimes has to take on her younger brothers as well.
“They want to wrestle me, but I win,” she said.
Amy spent one year on the school team at Westside Academy before the program shut down and wrestled with the club for three years before the pandemic hit.
“At the very beginning I wrestled at Westside, I found that really fun and then when they closed, I wanted to keep doing this,” she said. “I really enjoyed it, so we decided to come to here (to the club) and give it a shot and we ended up staying and loving it.
“I really like the competition, it’s fun to win, and I like that you have to keep fit in it and try really hard. When you think of sports, you don’t think of wrestling, but it’s really fun. I do basketball and volleyball and I’ve improved greatly since I started wrestling again. It helps other sports because you have to be agile and stay on your feet and move fast.”
At the national tournament, Amy and Hunter McCarthy, 13, will be entered in the Grade7/8 category, while Zack and Caleb Low, 14, will compete in the Grade 9/10 class. Amy is tall for her age, solidly built and strong, which should help her compete against the Grade 8s in her weight class.
“I’m just really excited for the experience, kind of nervous though, because I haven’t done anything since I was way younger,” she said
“I remember in Grade 5, I wrestled a tenth grader and I was really proud of myself. I like the challenge of that and if I lose and I didn’t do very well I’ll remind myself, OK, I’m still not that age. It’s definitely a good challenge and I’ve missed this. I couldn’t work on my wrestling anywhere else.”
Low started wrestling when he was seven after he saw the older kids at Westside learning holds and making their moves on the mats.
“It’s just a fun sport,” said Low. “You get tougher than most kids and learn how to defend yourself a little bit if you ever get into as situation. The club is really good because next year I hope to wrestle in tournaments and provincials and stuff like that. It would be just a disaster going in without two years (of any competition), so this is really good.”
Low also plays soccer and basketball on the school team and is hoping to get a university wrestling scholarship. He said he wouldn’t rule out someday becoming a professional wrestler in the WWE.
“I would go all the way if I had a chance to,” he said.
After a two-year COVID hiatus, the club resumed its twice-a-week practices in April in the upstairs gym at Prince George Secondary School and coach McCarthy runs two groups – one for elementary-aged students and one for teens in junior/senior high school.
“We’ve been out of competition for two years, so I have no idea how they’ll do,” said Dennis McCarthy. “One of the reasons for starting up this club in the off-season was we went to a tournament just after Christmas. There were four Lower Mainland clubs and they really didn’t lose stride. They were training through a lot of the pandemic when the high school programs were shut down. Just seeing how they gained momentum and we lost momentum, I wanted to get this started.”
McCarthy, the coach at Kelly Road Secondary School from 1993-2002, has revived the club that enabled him to win provincial titles and achieve a No. 2 ranking as a Kelly Road student at the 1990 national age-group championships. He became an assistant to coach Ken Barwise at the club five years ago, when his son Hunter got involved in wrestling. The club now has high school students from Westside Academy, College Heights, Shas Ti Kelly Road. PGSS and Duchess Park.
Not all schools in the city offer wrestling programs and the club brings them together to form a critical mass that on most evenings attracts between 16 and 20 kids in each group. Club sessions will run to mid-June. Next year McCarthy plans to run club throughout the high school wrestling season.
Isaac Le Morvan 20, was coached by McCarthy as a PGSS student and he’s now in his second year of wrestling for the University of Alberta Golden Bears, having joined the team in the summer of 2020 after he finished fourth at the provincial high school championships. The 2020-21 season was wiped out entirely by COVID. Le Morvan, a civil engineering student, wrestled throughout this past season and the Golden Bears went on to win the Canada West Conference team championship. The U SPORTS national championships scheduled for March in Saskatoon were cancelled due to a flareup of the virus.
Le Morvan was sidelined with a knee injury and did not compete at the Canada West finals, but he’s healthy again and has been practicing with the Prince George club to prepare for the Canadian trials in Edmonton, May 26-29. He’s entered in the 65 -kilogram class in the double-elimination tournament and could be a medal threat.
“I haven’t wrestled most guys out east, I’ve mostly been staying in the west and I’ve done well here and there at tournaments so I think (a medal) is a possibility,” he said. “Dealing with injuries is tough, some knee problems and hip issues. It’s a very intense physical sport but it’s fun.”
Le Morvan and PGSS alumni wrestlers Paul Bryant and Jesse Parker are on hand at club practices to demonstrate some of the more advanced skills with McCarthy. Le Morvan is thrilled to see young kids enthused about learning how to wrestle in his former high school haunts.
“It’s great to have so many kids and the high school program is doing really well too, so I’m happy about that,” said Le Morvan. “When I was in high school there were years when there was like three or four people in the room, so it’s great to have almost 20 kids wrestling. Kids are playing around and they’re having fun, because if they’re not having fun they’re not going to be here.
“I’ll be real excited to see how they do in a couple years.”
