By Dan Plouffe
Both in Grade 10, Quinlan Walker and Theresa El-Lati are two of the younger competitors heading to the OFSAA wrestling championships, but there’s no doubt the national capital gold medalists have found a love for their sport that any others would be hard-pressed to match.
El-Lati started wrestling in Grade 8 at Samuel-Genest and soon enough she transformed from a kid without much interest in, well, anything, into a dedicated high-performance athlete.
“I wanted to do something with my life, to be honest,” recounts El-Lati, who had a relatively easy time winning the 58-kilogram division at the city finals in February. “I was 14 years old and I didn’t really have anything in my life to do, and I didn’t exercise much because I was asthmatic before and they wouldn’t let me.
“I never really had anything in my life that I loved a lot. Now it’s my passion. I really love wrestling.”
Samuel-Genest and Tsunami Academy club coach Derek Kossatz calls El-Lati his “biggest success story” because of the change the sport brought to his athlete.
“I trained, I lost weight, I got stronger, and that was the year I pulled off a lot of things that no one expected me to,” notes the fourth-place finisher from last year’s cadet national championships who also loves the team bond that exists in the sport. “It’s a good feeling to know you kind of prove people wrong.”
For Walker, his love for the sport was also instantaneous, although that’s hard to believe considering the first time he was on the mats he separated his shoulder.
“I wasn’t the best at it at first, but I still got that thrill of fighting with a single person and deciding who’s better,” explains the Canterbury High School student. “I’ve never shied away from a challenge, and getting hurt just challenged me more.”
Walker has achieved some standout results recently, including a club provincial title with his National Capital Wrestling Club. And he wound up in a terrific struggle with NCWC teammate Mohamed Zeineddine, a Grade 12 student at St. Patrick’s, in the 77 kg high school city final.
“We’d never actually wrestled full-out,” highlights Walker, who trains with Zeineddine at least twice a week and embraced his clubmate after earning a narrow victory. “It was pure excitement to win. It’s unbelievable. I’m so happy.”
The star attraction of the national capital championships was El-Lati’s Samuel-Genest teammate Alejandra Paguaga. The city finals provided another venue for the defending OFSAA champion to toss around opponents like ragdolls as she easily won the girls’ 54 kg division.
Coming off a fifth-place cadet world championships finish, the March 5-7 OFSAA provincials in Peterborough are definitely the Grade 11 student’s to lose.
South Carleton were the overall team champions at the Feb. 22 event at St. Pat’s, followed by Brookfield and Lester B. Pearson.