By Braedon Clark
Erica Wiebe had to win, but there was more to it than that. As she stepped onto the mat, the task before her was daunting but simple. Pin her opponent and she’d be the Canadian champion in the 72kg weight class. She’d also get the chance to travel to Panama and compete in the Pan-American wrestling championships.
Winning by any other method wouldn’t be good enough, and losing was an option not worth considering. Wiebe isn’t a prolific pinner, which made the situation even more desperate. Wiebe found herself in this spot thanks to a loss in her first match, a loss that forced her to pin her next two opponents to be crowned champion.
Wiebe and her opponent, Justina Di Stasio, took their places. Each hunched over, waiting for the referee’s whistle. Wiebe wore a red spandex suit, Di Stasio blue. A small electronic scoreboard on a nearby folding table showed the score and time remaining in each round. The bleachers at The University of New Brunswick’s Richard J. Currie Centre were about half full. The referee blew his whistle and the show was on. Almost immediately, Wiebe knew this was no ordinary match.
“As soon as we started wrestling in the first round, I could feel the nervous energy in her body. I’ve wrestled her so many times and she was wrestling very differently from how she had in the past. That gave me confidence because I knew she was uncertain and she knew how badly I wanted it and I could tell. She was trying to be so passive at the beginning and not giving me any opportunities to do my offence.”
The first round was uneventful, the two wrestlers like heavyweight boxers feeling each other out with soft jabs. Wiebe’s coaches reminded her to relax and stop focusing on the pin she so badly needed. Whether that was the difference or not is impossible to say, but a bear hug in the second round – followed by 45 seconds of subtle but intense positioning – was all Wiebe needed to get that elusive pin.
There were enthusiastic cheers from the crowd, which included Wiebe’s mother Paula Preston. “Needless to say I was thrilled and so was she when she did it,” Preston said. It was a rare display of emotion from a usually reserved fan.
There was just cause for happiness, of course. Wiebe, one of Canada’s top wrestlers, would be heading to Panama. It would be just another stop on a world tour that began in Stittsville, a suburb on Ottawa’s western edge.
Like many Canadian youngsters, Erica Wiebe grew up playing many different sports. At one point she was even sent along with her older sister Alisa to rhythmic gymnastics lessons, where it was obvious she was in the wrong place.
“Erica did not like rhythmic gymnastics,” her mother remembered. “A coach said ‘She has such big feet!’ so we knew that wasn’t the sport for Erica.”
Soccer would prove to be Wiebe’s sport of choice, as it is for so many kids. Unlike most, however, she was a natural. She progressed quickly through the ranks of the elite Ottawa Fury club and by the time she was in high school, at Sacred Heart in Stittsville, Wiebe was being recruited by American schools. The most serious overtures came from Florida Atlantic, in sunny Boca Raton. Accepting an offer would have meant a full scholarship and the chance to compete at a very high level.
To many it would seem a no-brainer, but by that point Wiebe had discovered her sports soul mate – wrestling. She joined with three friends but they all quit within a month, leaving her alone but not sad.
“Wrestling was offered at my high school and it was an opportunity to do a new sport,” Wiebe said. “It was a co-ed sport and we got to wear really cool spandex outfits, so to be honest I was like ‘This looks interesting, I could be down with wrestling with the guys.’”
Yes, the guys. While Wiebe said she’s never been judged for competing in a traditionally male sport (female wrestling was only added to the Olympics in 2004), the stereotypes that dog some female wrestlers may have scared away potential suitors.
“Looking back I don’t think it helped me get a boyfriend in high school,” she said with a laugh. “I think all of the guys were super intimidated by me.”
It might not have been fair, but it’s easy to see why those teenage boys felt that way. Now 23, Wiebe certainly has the capacity to intimidate. Five-foot-nine and with powerful legs that scream wrestler, Wiebe gives off the unmistakable impression of being an athlete.
She competes in the 72kg weight class, which is just less than 160 pounds. On the mat she is intense and focused, a coiled spring looking for the smallest of openings, the tiniest of opportunities. When she takes those opportunities, the sport becomes one of technique, leverage and timing. A misstep here, a shift there and a match can be over.
Wiebe came out of high school an unfinished product, talented but raw. She’d left soccer behind and was ready to focus on her wrestling career. Now it was time to find a place where she could pursue her Olympic dream. In the end, the choice was clear – it would be the University of Calgary.
There are few places in Canada with a better wrestling program than the University of Calgary. The city has long been a hotspot for winter athletes who take advantage of the world-class facilities built for the 1988 Winter Olympics, but the university’s wrestling program has carved out its own niche.
Wiebe arrived on campus having already won a national championship at the cadet junior level, but it didn’t take long for her to realize that wouldn’t count for much. In fact, she didn’t even make the varsity team during her first year, losing a wrestle-off (think dance-off, but with more spandex) for the last spot on the team. For Wiebe, that first year seemed like an endless exercise in futility.
“I felt like every day I went into the room and didn’t score a single point,” she said. “I tried my hardest every time and couldn’t score a single point. But when I went to junior nationals that year I knew no one in my age group had competed against that level of talent and that gave me so much confidence heading into that event and I ended up winning it very easily.”
Wiebe’s coach at the university, and now at the club level (as she’s finished her five years of eligibility) is Mitch Ostberg. A former wrestler himself, Ostberg knows firsthand the sacrifices that come with being a full-time wrestler. There’s not a lot of money in the sport and the days are long and grueling.
“For someone at Erica’s level, it’s a full-time job,” Ostberg said.
There’s no doubt about that. Wiebe receives funding from Sport Canada and Own the Podium, the organization originally founded to help develop athletes and bolster Canada’s medal count at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. The money is greatly appreciated but it doesn’t go quite far enough and so Wiebe, having completed her undergraduate degree in kinesiology, works as a personal trainer at a gym in downtown Calgary.
Her schedule is hellacious. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday it goes like this: Wake up at 6:30; work from 8-11; two training sessions at the university, one from noon until 1:30, the other from 4:30 to 6:30; home by 7:30 or 8 – “if I’m lucky,” she adds. Dinner, then bed. Rinse and repeat. On Tuesday and Thursday she doesn’t work but trains at 8 in the morning, and then goes to class during the afternoon. She’s pursuing a master’s degree in public health. Saturdays are comparatively light, with only a workout in the morning. Sundays are a dream, a day off, though Wiebe usually does yoga to prepare for the upcoming week.
It’s a brutal schedule, but one that Wiebe must endure. If she wants to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, there’s really no choice.
The news hit the wrestling world like a bomb. On February 12 of this year, the International Olympic Committee’s executive board announced that, as of the 2020 Games, wrestling would be dropped from its list of 25 “core sports”.
The decision to drop wrestling and keep the modern pentathlon was greeted with widespread shock. On that morning Wiebe was heading in to her job as a personal trainer. Like most mornings, she hadn’t read the newspaper or gone online to check the headlines.
“In a 15 minute period I had about 10 people who know me as Erica the wrestler bombard me with these questions and I had no idea. I was in disbelief and shock. I was like, ‘Is this April Fool’s’? I didn’t understand the magnitude of it.”
Fortunately for Wiebe, the decision to drop wrestling, if finalized, wouldn’t take effect until 2020, leaving the 2016 Games as a potential last dance for a venerable sport. She went to London as a training partner but is set on going to Rio as a full member of the team, possibly one of the last wrestlers to compete on the Olympic stage. Like many in the wrestling community, Wiebe is not ready to concede that the sun has set on her sport.
“I haven’t sat down and cried about it,” Wiebe said. “I really believe that the decision isn’t final and that the decision will be changed.”
Whether that happens or not, Rio will remain. Paula Preston, Wiebe’s mother, has already begun to save money for the eventual trip to Brazil. Qualifying will take place over the next couple of years, but there is a sense that Wiebe has a real shot. She’ll get the chance to test herself against some of the world’s best in early April at the Pan-American championships, set to be held in Panama.
If Wiebe has any regrets about her career path, she keeps them especially well-hidden. She jokes about being jealous of her friends who went to Florida Atlantic – specifically their pictures of partying in Miami – but it seems good-natured. She concedes that going to the U.S. would probably have left her debt-free, but again it comes across as playful self-loathing rather than legitimate anguish.
In any case, being jealous of people in Miami seems pointless when taking a look at Wiebe’s passport. In the past year alone, wrestling has taken her to Finland, Brazil, Austria, Germany and Turkey. It hasn’t always been an easy journey, but it’s been an interesting one. Add a Brazilian stamp to that cluttered passport and all of those early mornings and late nights will have been worth it. It might be the last time, but what a time it would be.
2 NCWC wrestlers crowned national champs
Wiebe earned a taste of international competition thanks to her victory at the Canadian championships, placing third of 10 Pan American wrestlers in Panama. The September world championships in Hungary are a possibility, although Wiebe may first face a wrestle-off for Canada’s berth against Callahan, who missed the nationals due to injury.
At the April 4-7 cadet/juvenile Canadian championships in Saskatoon, Taylor Robinson of the NCWC made her nationals debut and took gold in the cadet women’s 80 kg division, winning both her matches in Wiebe fashion, by pinfall.
NCWC’s Augusta Eve won gold in the juvenile women’s 43 kg and was second in the Canadian FILA team trials, while Tsunami Academy’s Liam Macfadyen took home bronze in the cadet men’s 54 kg. Torin Macfadyen and Theresa El-Lati of Tsunami, along with NCWC’s Evan Takach, also earned top-6 results.