Colten Illingworth gave himself a nice confidence booster in advance of the high school wrestling provincials.
Illingworth, a College Heights secondary school student, defeated Kelly Road's Cody Furnell in the 63-kilogram final at last weekend's zone championship tournament in Mackenzie. And Illingworth, a Grade 9, beat Furnell, a Grade 12, convincingly. By the time the match was done, the younger wrestler had himself a 10-0 victory.
"Cody is a five-year wrestler, and Colten is definitely an up-and-comer," said local coach Louie Van Grootel. "He had a nice throw that gave him four points right off the bat, and just determination and hard work. It has really been paying off for him this year."
Even though Illingworth attends College Heights, he trains with a large group of athletes at PGSS, guided by Van Grootel.
Next for Illingworth will be the provincial championship tournament right here in Prince George. Provincials will happen next weekend at the Northern Sport Centre and will bring close to 450 grapplers to the city.
Several competitors will be local, including Eric Halsall of D.P. Todd and Dan Gillis of PGSS.
The Grade 12 Halsall will be a medal favourite in the 74kg class. For zones, other wrestlers intentionally cut or added weight so they could avoid him. Consequently, Halsall was alone in his division and had exhibition matches against Vanderhoof's Jonah Reinke -- who had beaten him at last year's national championships but is now a high school graduate -- and Kelly Road coach Clint Pattison. Halsall won both bouts, and the one against Pattison was a true crowd-pleaser.
"It was nice for Clint to go in there and wrestle him," Van Grootel said. "It was a very technical match and well-wrestled. And we wrestled it right at the end of zones so basically everybody was watching. It allowed us to leave zones the right way, with lots of energy going into provincials."
For the provincial meet, Halsall will probably be seeded second in the 74kg class, behind Justin Gill of Abbotsford's Rick Hansen secondary school.
As for Gillis, he placed second at zones to fellow Grade 12 Connor White, who was representing Fort St. John's North Peace secondary. Gillis and White squared off in the 84kg final and White won 8-2. For provincials, Gillis is considered a top-six contender in his weight category.
In the team standings at zones, Nechako Valley of Vanderhoof edged PGSS 47-46 on the boys side. On the girls side, Kelly Road took the team title, 21-15 over Lake City secondary of Williams Lake.
Kelly Road battled to team gold despite the fact its individual wresters are all young and brand new to the sport.
"We didn't have a wrestling team up until about four weeks ago," said Dave Murguly, athletics director at Kelly Road. "At that point, 11 Grade 8 girls came to one of my practices after school. They all showed up at the same time and, in four weeks, those girls went on to win zones. It's kind of a neat story because they're all Grade 8s and were the youngest there."
The Kelly Road team members are Megan Arronge, Sadie Pointer, Joey Ho, Katherine Young, Jordan McMillan, Kayli Wood, Faith Van Koughnett, Lillian Simes, Jenna Forrest, Denae Meise and Darcee Hiemstra.
The provincial championships are being held in Prince George for just the third time in their history.
Matches will get underway at 9 a.m. on Feb. 28 and will go until about 8 that night. The next day, the tournament will resume at 9 a.m. Preliminary bouts will conclude at about 11 a.m. and the finals will start at 2 p.m.
Admission is free, except for the finals. The entrance fee for the finals will be $5.
