On Saturday January 15, the Varsity Blues wrestling team traveled to the University of Guelph for the Guelph Open. The Guelph Open is one of only two national team carding tournaments hosted per year in all of Canada. The top three finishers qualify for training funding from the Canadian government.
The toughest competition from all across Canada showed up to this event as a result of the high stakes, and early on it was apparent that the Blues wrestlers were signifigantly outmatched by their clearly more experienced counterparts. Many schools, including the host Gryphons, opted to sit out most of their wrestlers due to the high level of competition.
Queen’s University, for instance, only suited up one wrestler for the tournament.
“With such a young team it’s hard to get a feel in the practice room for what needs to be done during a match,” said Mike Quinsey, the rookie head coach of the Blues. “By wrestling at this level today, our wrestlers had an opportunity to make mistakes and work to improve on them. If you don’t give your wrestlers a chance to make those mistakes, there’s no way to improve upon them.”
The team, consisting mostly of wrestlers in their first year of competition at the collegiate level, was able to muster only three wins on the whole on Saturday. Those wins came courtesy of Jimmy Feng, Chris Banic, and Temur Urakov. All three men went 1-2 on the day in their respective weight classes.
Feng competed in the 66-kilogram weight class, Urakov at 84 kilos, and Banic at 96 kilos. All three of those wrestlers have one thing in common: of the 11 wrestlers who competed for the Blues on Saturday, both men’s and women’s, these three are the only ones with at least one season of collegiate wrestling experience.
This is Feng’s third year of competition as a Blue and his second Guelph Open, while Urakov and Banic are each currently in their sophomore campaigns and were each competing in the Guelph Open for the first time.
When searching for inspiration, the rest of the team need look no further than Banic, who last year watched the tournament from the bleachers. He was anything but a spectator this time around. Banic was a force to be reckoned with on the mat, giving his competition all they could handle. The result sheet did no justice as to the vast improvements just one year of experience has resulted in for Banic, who is a sign of good things to come for the Blues.
After the tournament, Quinsey was quick to attribute the team’s growth, in terms of numbers and skill level, to U of T’s growing support of the program: “Last year the training space was small and as a result you can’t have as much quality practice. This year we’ve upgraded to a larger training space and the growth of the team has been a result. As we get more experienced wrestlers leading the way, continue to upgrade facilities in terms of proper mats and padded walls, and get the word out about the improving team, I think the program will continue to grow.”
Quinsey is no stranger to building prestigious wrestling programs from scratch. When he graduated high school in 1977 he took a chance and decided to compete for a first year wrestling program at Simon Fraser University. In just a few short years he saw the University’s team go from being nonexistent to a perennial powerhouse on the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) circuit (Simon Fraser competed against American schools instead of other Canadian universities).
Quinsey believes that the Blues possess the necessary tools and talent to achieve a similar turnaround in the near future, and hopes to showcase that talent in two weeks at the Western Open. This tournament will give the individuals on the team an opportunity to establish themselves as a strong force against their league counterparts, and will give the team a chance to show the rest of the Ontario University Athletics that the Blues are back, and they’re here to stay.
