Cynthia Lam, Staff Writer
Featured image courtesy of York Lions
Three members of the Lions wrestling team headed out of the province once again this past weekend to compete in the 2016 Canadian Senior Wrestling Championships in New Brunswick. The team hustled through a very successful tournament, with Maddy Delle-Donne picking up a bronze medal and Gurnek Tak and Alexandria Town both bringing home gold.
Town headed to the tournament fresh from her bronze-medal victories in the 55-kilogram division at both the Ontario University Athletics and Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships. Carrying over the momentum, she easily won all of her matches in the first round.
“I had three matches that day,” says Town. “The first I won by pinfall with a score of 12-0, the second was 13-2, and the last was 10-0.”
She had her gold medal match against Laurence Beauregard of Montreal, which turned out to be an almost instant win for Town. “She wasn’t able to score a single point on me,” Town says. “I finished all of my attacks and countered every one of hers.”
Lions’ rookie Tak also had a successful weekend participating in the Junior Men’s Greco Roman Canadian Championships where he won a gold medal.
“It was my first national competition for wrestling,” says Tak. “The biggest challenge was that I had to go up a weight class and I got completely destroyed in freestyle wrestling. But I came back and won the Greco Roman wrestling championship.”
His final match in the men’s 60-kilogram category was against the Western Mustangs’ Eric Renaud, whom he dominated with a score of 2-0. But Tak is not gloating. “I learned that no matter how good you are, you can only get better,” he says. “There’s no limit to what you can achieve.”
Meanwhile, Delle-Donne worked her way up to a bronze medal in the women’s 82-kilogram category, which adds to her achievements after her gold medal at the Ontario Junior Championships earlier this year.
This marks the end of the season for the Lions wrestling team, which finished off with multiple victories. However, the hustle is far from over for most of the team members.
“I have a new sense of confidence in my abilities and an even stronger sense of confidence in our program,” says Town. “We sent three wrestlers out to New Brunswick and returned with three medals. And to top it all off, most of us are within our first few years of eligibility. It’s all very exciting for the team.”
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