A pair of St. Albert wrestlers are grappling with success and winning.
Jayden Manson and Jack McDougall continue their medal run this weekend at the cadet/juvenile nationals in Calgary before leaving with a select group of Alberta wrestlers for the Aztec Warrior Championships in New Mexico.
Last month, the Grade 11 St. Albert Skyhawks combined to pin down the 3A male team banner at the Albert Schools’ Athletic Association championship. Manson won gold in the 62-kilogram category and McDougall was the 65-kg silver medallist as the only two Skyhawks at the meet finished with more team points than 16 other schools.
The Edmonton Wrestling Club members the last five years are also in good shape for the provincial trials for the 2017 Canada Summer Games in Winnipeg.
“Jack and I have like a natural gift for wrestling. It’s come to us so easy and quickly but you have to work hard to keep up in this sport. This sport is hard and not a lot of people can keep up with it,” said Manson, last year’s 54-kg cadet bronze medallist in his national debut at Fredericton, New Brunswick.
McDougall, 16, is coming off a first-place result at the Alberta Open Provincial Club Championship in the juvenile 65-kg category and Manson lost a bout with stomach flu and was unable to compete.
McDougall’s third nationals but first as a juvenile is shaping up to be the best of the bunch.
“I’m really exited for this nationals. I think this is the year I’ve been the most prepared,” said last year’s seventh-place 63-kg cadet after finishing eighth in 2014. “I never get particularly nervous but I’m always a bit pensive kind of going in. I just want to see how I stack up against everyone else. Other than that, I really enjoy the entire experience. Every time I’ve gone it’s been one of the best parts of the season.”
McDougall’s 3-2 record in the 24-man bracket included an early loss to the Ontario champion and eventual silver medallist.
“Definitely, I want to do better than last year,” he said. “I actually thought my match (against the Ontario opponent) wasn’t for another couple but I was wrong. It ended up being sooner than I thought it was so I wasn’t quite prepared.”
The competition is razor shape.
“I have a hard weight category (63 kg), it always is. That 58 to 63 in-between range is always the hardest," McDougall said.
“There are so many kids our age and our size,” Manson added.
Juvenile is also a new U18 age group for both wrestlers.
“I’m just little worried because I’m going against older guys. Last year I was at the top of the food chain and now I’m back at the bottom,” said Manson, 16.
His breakthrough performance at nationals exceeded expectations.
“It was amazing. I never knew I was that good, honestly. There were some guys in my weight class that looked like monsters and then you see me, a stick,” said Manson of his 4-1 record in the cadet division. “It was just great to experience how good everybody is in Canada. When I was watching other matches I was really focused on what they learned because obviously different clubs do different things and they’re from different sides of Canada. I was really looking for how to improve and what can I do better than those guys out there and excel.”
Manson will wrestle at 58 kg at this year’s nationals.
“My goal is to make the FILA cadet trials so that’s for both cadet and juvenile. The top three from cadet come up to fight the juveniles from our weight category and the FILA cadet is pretty much the qualifications for being on the national (U18) team for Canada,” said last year’s alternate from the cadet/juvenile head-to-head 54-kg showdown who will join other male and female wrestlers from Canada at a two-week training camp in Italy in July.
After nationals, Manson and McDougall will compete in the folkstyle (American collegiate), freestyle and Greco-Roman tournaments at the Aztec Warrior Championships next weekend in Farmington with several familiar Team Alberta faces they traveled with last year to the Sammie (The Bull) Henson camp in San Quentin, Calif., prior to the Western Canada Summer Games. They drove down as a team, rented a house on the bench and went for daily morning runs before heading to a high school for training in the wrestling room for two two-hour sessions with the two-time NCAA champion, world gold medallist and Olympic silver medallist.
“Best camp ever,” Manson said.
So far, the highlight of the year was high school provincials at Bev Facey High School.
“I’m pretty surprised that only the two of us beat some teams with like 20, 30 kids,” Manson said.
“That was pretty awesome,” added McDougall, who lost the 65-kg final to Connor McNeice of 1A/2A St. Timothy’s of Cochrane, a multiple national champion who placed fifth at the 2015 World Cadet Championships in the 58-kg category.
In Grade 10, McDougall was 62-kg metro Edmonton champion and provincial high school silver medallist.
Manson ran the table at this year’s high school provincials by defeating Charles Cook St. Timothy’s in the 62-kg final.
“It was one of my favorite matches of the year because I hadn’t beat this guy in a long time and I destroyed him,” he said. “I was scared, I was nervous and shaking and I beat him. I was so happy. It was amazing.”
The scouting report on Manson is his “insane strength,” according to McDougall.
“Every time I’ve wrestled him, even if I’m beating him, technically he can just brute force a lot of things but that’s not to say he’s not technical because the moves he does he does really well,” McDougall said of his wrestling teammate since Grade 4.
Manson described McDougall as a leg man.
“Jack brings those this long arms and he just goes for those legs and once he’s got one leg you’re pretty much finished,” Manson said of the Western Canada Summer Games gold medallist at 63 kg despite taking a knee to the groin in the final, plus a silver medallist in the team event, last August at the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo.
McDougall thrives on the individuality of the sport.
“You have your team and they support you and your part of the team but it’s up to you to win or lose,” he said
In July, McDougall will travel with wrestlers from Alberta and Saskatchewan to Japan for two weeks of training and three dual meets. They will live with Japanese families in the Hiroshima area, attend English classes at their schools and train with the school teams in a cultural exchange. The Japanese wrestlers will be hosted in Alberta in August.
Practice makes perfect in any sport and every day the wrestling duo are perfecting their craft with sessions of between 90 minutes to two hours with the Edmonton Wrestling Club at the Butterdome or working out at Manson’s house.
“At the height of the season we have five practices a week. We train two days with the university team and three with the high school team (at the Edmonton Wrestling Club),” said McDougall, noting Friday is sort of a day off, except for cardio or strength workouts.
“There’s extras too, like running and camps and tournaments, plus lots of stairs,” Manson said. “But it’s worth it.”
