Kingston’s Makinleigh Courtney puts in many miles to train with National Capital Wrestling Club

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A huge team of 46 Ottawa athletes are set to compete at the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games in Newfoundland. The Ottawa Sports Pages will be sending out a free daily email newsletter with recaps, previews and profiles throughout the Aug. 9-24 national youth multi-sport event.

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By Keiran Gorsky

Kingston’s Makinleigh Courtney tries to make two trips a week to the National Capital Wrestling Club in Ottawa, there and back. Her father Darryl Courtney at the wheel, she’s gotten into the habit of taking a nap, sometimes on the way there, sometimes on the return trip.

“Depends on the day,” she laughs.

It’s a four-hour round trip, but well worth it for the 16-year-old grappler who treasures the personalized feedback she gets from coach Chris Schrauwen in Ottawa. Their shared ability to pinpoint what precisely needs work and how to tweak her process for competitive bouts is a major part of how Courtney battled her way to a place on Ontario’s team for the St. John’s 2025 Canada Summer Games.

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Courtney has only been wrestling for three years, although since age five, she’s participated in jiujitsu, like her father before her.

“Martial arts in general builds such confidence in children,” says the elder Courtney, who has enrolled all three of his daughters in jiujitsu academies. “It’s not just being able to protect yourself, but really all challenges in life.”

Courtney enjoyed her time on the competitive circuit, but her father was quick to spot how much more readily she seemed to retain information on the wrestling mat. It was after winning her category at the 2024 Ontario Winter Games in Thunder Bay that Courtney committed to the switch.

There’s more crossover than there used to be between disciplines, Schrauwen explains, particularly in young, ambitious fighters trying all they can to round themselves out. For Courtney, there’s a genuine and beneficial bit of overlap. Her penchant for different throws and her ability to squeeze out of difficult holds is immediately obvious on the mat.

“I’ve always been good at recorrecting myself and making the best out of messed up situations,” explains Courtney, who wrestles in the women’s 59-kilogram category.

Where jiujitsu was exclusively an out-of-school activity, wrestling has granted Courtney the opportunity to attend high school OFSAA tournaments and to build friendships in a new environment. Her family recently moved closer to Kingston’s city centre and away from rural Sydenham, chiefly so she could attend a high school with a wrestling team.

It made a big difference at the OFSAA Wrestling Championships this time around, Courtney feels. At the competition last year, she had to self-represent and list her father as her coach, even as she managed a fourth-place finish. With peers to train against and tournaments all year round, the 16-year-old Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School student is noticeably more comfortable.

Though she’s more than capable of recovering from her own momentary lapses in concentration, Courtney’s real talent is capitalizing on her opponents’ mistakes. Her relentless pressure forces her opponents to make those mistakes a lot more often than they’d like.

“I would call her a bully, in a good way,” Schrauwen says of her fighting style.

Of course, off the mat, she’s perfectly pleasant. It was wonderful to push her way through to the finals in her age category at this year’s OFSAA, Courtney describes, but equally wonderful to catch up with her friends from all around the province.

That tournament was two months separated from the Ontario team trials for the Canada Games in Hamilton, where Courtney qualified for St. John’s. It was a ‘ladder system’ setup, in which Courtney would have to contend with two top-seeded competitors in her weight category in Tegan Colling and Aleena Dhanji.

Courtney was previously winless against both of them. Dhanji, a technical fighter with a tendency towards arm spins and shoulder throws, seemed a particularly daunting opponent. It wasn’t a bracket where any one girl was utterly dominant, Schrauwen recounts; everyone was competitive. Courtney, with her ultra-aggressive approach, was the one to come out on top.

“I guess it was my day,” Courtney reflects.

With qualification sealed, the road trips to Ottawa haven’t stopped in preparation for the Canada Games. In recent weeks, though, Courtney has added an extra training ground a little closer to home.

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Together with two other fathers of martial arts kids, Darryl acquired some space on the second floor of a warehouse a half-hour away from their home. Courtney and her friends have been practicing there since.

Her final bit of preparation leading up to Newfoundland was a two-day trip to Clayton, New York for the St. Lawrence River Rumble, a dual meet event in which Courtney helped her team to a third-place finish. The Canada Games competition features both individual and team events.

For Courtney, a podium finish would be acceptable, but the goal is to take home the gold in St. John’s.

She’ll be joined by another National Capital Wrestling Club athlete in St. John’s. Men’s 67 kg freestyle competitor Dexter Bates enjoyed a perfect undefeated Grade 11 season for Holy Trinity Catholic High School where he had nothing but wins en route to the OFSAA provincial high school gold medal.