“The path to greatness begins with your willingness to take small steps” - Kathy McClary
That’s one of my all-time favourite quotes, I’ve always wanted to start a column off with it, and I feel it’s more than appropriate for this one.
Hello and welcome back to Tyson’s Thoughts. I’ve taken a little bit of a break from writing these things, mainly because I’ve been really busy covering North Island news and coaching high school wrestling in my spare time.
It’s definitely been a long wrestling season with a few bumps along the road, but I can see that the end is now in sight.
I’ve been coaching the sport at Port Hardy Secondary School for five years now, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me how I got involved in it, so here’s how it all started.
I trained Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts in Nanaimo (and briefly on the mainland as well) for most of my 20’s before I moved back to my hometown of Port Hardy at the age of 31. There’s no jiu jitsu or MMA schools here, so I ended up taking a nearly five-year break from grappling and got back into skateboarding instead. I had a lot of fun skateboarding, but I racked up too many injuries so I had to quit. After I turned 35, I suddenly got the itch to start training grappling again. I looked around and my only real option was to start a high school wrestling program at Port Hardy Secondary School (North Island Secondary School in Port McNeill doesn’t have wrestling mats so that was never a choice).
When I started the program in October of 2019, we didn’t have a teacher-sponsor so we weren’t able to travel down island to competitions. For that reason alone, the wrestling program became just a club where kids could drop in, learn some moves, and get some training in. I’d already decided at that point that I was going to teach folkstyle wrestling instead of freestyle.
Folkstyle is incredibly popular in the USA, but not so much here in Canada. Folkstyle’s more about scrambles, riding time, and it has different rules and a different point system which I personally think makes it more enjoyable for youth to learn (if you’re wondering where I learned folkstyle from, I’m a huge college wrestling nerd, I catch all of the dual meets on Youtube and am a big Iowa Hawkeyes fan).
My original folkstyle crew consisted of Maven Labree, Dawson Lamothe, Grant Joseph, Wyatt Young, and Jimmy Dawson. We had a lot of fun, trained hard, and it was a memorable first season with a lot of great memories.
Then COVID-19 hit in March of 2020 and everything changed. My wrestling program was shut down for the entire 2020-2021 season. By 2021-2022, we were allowed by the school to start training again and Maven, Dawson, Grant, and Wyatt all made sporadic appearances on the mats.
We also had a few new students show up to try folkstyle wrestling. One of them was Sheldon Frank, who seemed really eager to learn. Most of my students weren’t really committed to training, but I noticed Sheldon was very dedicated. He never skipped practice, was polite to everyone, and he didn’t give me any issues at all. I basically used him and his brother Raiyden as training dummies for about three months, throwing them around and pinning them without mercy, before a bad covid outbreak in town forced us to once again shut down the program.
In 2022-2023, Paul Cagna moved from Ucluelet to work at PHSS, and he agreed to be the teacher-sponsor for the wrestling program, which was when we made the decision to switch from folkstyle to freestyle in order to compete down island.
Last season was basically the rebirth of PHSS Wrestling, with the highlights being Maven earning a silver medal, Auzton Shaw bringing home two bronze medals, Rylan France winning a bronze medal, and Brody Chambers winning two silver medals and qualifying for the BC Provincial Championships.
There was no sign of Sheldon all season, he’d moved to Surrey and was playing rugby.
Skipping ahead to the current 2023-2024 season, we started out with a solid group of eight students in mid-October. Cagna and I managed to get six of them to travel to Nanaimo to compete in the novice tournament in December.
Auzton battled all the way to the gold medal match and came home with his first silver medal, Rylan earned a bronze medal, and Jakob Bowers came through in a very clutch situation to win our club its first gold medal.
Midway through December, I randomly ran into Cagna and Sheldon at the post office. I asked Sheldon why he wasn’t training wrestling now that he was back in town. He said he was busy playing house league hockey and was on the volleyball team and didn’t have time for it. I told him he should rethink his priorities and concentrate on wrestling. I then made him a promise that if he came back and dedicated his time to practicing and competing, he would qualify for the BC Provincial Championships at the end of the season.
Sheldon was all in after hearing he could go to provincials. He started coming to practices, and after the Christmas break had ended, we got three really good training sessions in before the Campbell River Invitational. Cagna and I debated entering Sheldon in the 63 kg division, but he was walking around at 65 kg so we just left weight cutting alone and entered him at 66 kg to see how he’d perform.
In hindsight, it was a massive coaching mistake. Sheldon’s undersized at 66 kg, and he ended up losing all four of his matches at the tournament, two by pinfall and two by technical fall, coming in last place in the division.
Most people would have quit the sport after a disastrous tournament like that. Sheldon didn’t. Instead he doubled down on his conditioning, ate clean and dieted to 63 kg, and then put in endless rounds in the gym against myself, Cagna, and his 60 kg teammate Anthony Blacha to get ready for the Port Alberni Invitational tournament.
Sheldon was ready to compete this time, but we didn’t count on him getting a bye in the first round and having to face Arad Ahangi from Carson Graham in his very first match of the day.
Ahangi is an absolute beast on the mats, a national level wrestler with unreal technical abilities, and he showed it by dominating everyone in the 63 kg division on his way to winning the gold medal match.
Sheldon got tech falled 10-0 in 30 seconds by Ahangi and was sent into the consolation bracket where he’d have to run the gauntlet in order to qualify for the bronze medal match.
He did his best, avenging a previous loss to Alper Mete from Nanaimo and then pinning Sam German from Argyle in 30 seconds.
In his last match of the day he squared off against Eli Ergas from Collingwood, and they had a gruelling back and forth battle which Ergas managed to win by technical fall 14-4 in the second period (Ergas would go on to place second at the mainland zones and qualify for provincials).
While Sheldon didn’t medal, he showed everyone what he was capable of and would be a tough out for anyone in his division at the Vancouver Island Zone Championships the next weekend.
At islands, Sheldon was once again given a bye in the first round and then matched up with the top ranked 63 kg wrestler in the division, Alex McKenzie from Alberni District Secondary School.
Personally, I loved the matchup. Sheldon’s in Grade 12 and it’s his last season so I wanted him to face the absolute best wrestlers on the island. Winning a medal is a great thing, but how great does it really feel afterwards if you were given the easiest path in order to win it?
Sheldon went out there and went toe to toe with McKenzie, showing that he wasn’t going to just roll over and let him win easily. He got taken down, fought out of a near pin, and the ref even awarded Sheldon a two-point takedown of his own, but the match came to an abrupt end as a 10-0 technical fall victory for McKenzie.
Cagna and I didn’t know what had happened, but apparently the ADSS coaches challenged the takedown and it was removed from the scoreboard. It was kind of unfortunate, I actually felt like McKenzie was the one who was robbed of earning a win that he was most likely going to get before the second period, but this kind of thing happens sometimes and you just have to let it go and keep moving.
Sheldon once again got put into the consolation bracket and would have to run the gauntlet in order to qualify for provincials. He came out strong, pinning Mirai Suzuki from Francis Kelsey Secondary School, but then lost a rematch by technical fall 17-6 to Darius Martin, a real gritty wrestler from Timberline, which forced him to have to compete for fifth place against Tyler Belanger from Quamichan.
I told Sheldon if he didn’t win the match his season was over and we weren’t going to provincials. He just nodded and went out there and threw Belanger with a fireman’s carry right into a pin to win fifth place and secure his spot at provincials.
It was a really cool moment for me, mainly because the fireman’s carry was the first takedown that I’d shown Sheldon and Raiyden back in 2021 when they were both brand new to wrestling.
Now that it’s all said and done, just as I’d originally promised him outside of the post office back in December, Sheldon is going to the BC Provincial Championships. And while he doesn’t have the accolades (medals) that should connect to his accomplishments this season, believe me when I say this, he earned his spot in the tournament the hard way; through blood, sweat, and tears.
Tyson Whitney is an award-winning journalist/editor of the North Island Gazette. He was born and raised in Port Hardy. Email: editor@northislandgazette.com