Tamanawis wrestling team pins down another banner year
The Tamanawis Wildcats wrestling team has retained its top spot as the best in B.C., and possibly the best in the country, when it comes to male high school wrestling.
The team recently took home its third-straight provincial banner, once again crowning the squad as the best in the province.
Winning a banner means you have the best male team in the province and in Canada it's usually between B.C. and Ontario for the best team in the country,?said coach and former Tamanawis student Jessy Sahota. If you happen to have the strongest team in the province, there's a good chance you probably have the best in the country.
For Sahota, his pride in the team's success is twofold, as he is not only a current coach but also a founder of the team. In 2014, after both he and his brother Paul graduated, they went back to their alma mater and looked at helping to kickstart the school's wrestling program. The initiative was born out of their own years at Tamanawis when there wasn't really much of a wrestling program to speak of. At that time, the team was comprised of just the two brothers, who mostly resorted to coaching one another because there was no full-time wrestling coach.
A few years later, my brother and I looked back on our time there and thought Why not go back and start something on our own?'?recalled the community-drive Jessy, who is also an officer with the Delta Police Department.
And start something they did.
What began as a leisure program to help students make productive use of their time after school quickly grew into a full-fledged wrestling program. As more students joined, more funding and resources became available and eight years later, the team is celebrating its third-consecutive year at the top.
Jessy hopes the continued success will once again re-ignite the scouting scene as well, especially as more and more activities return to normal as pandemic restrictions are eased. Already, students of the program have received scholarships to post-secondary institutions in Canada and the United States, but Sahota has his sights set even higher.
I foresee within the next five years, we'll have some kids going off to Div. 1 schools in the USA,?said Sahota, referring to the NCAA Division 1 Wrestling Championships, the premier competition for Olympic-style wrestling in North America.
For now, the Sahota brothers are just happy to see their students carry the torch as they continue to rack up wins. It's a far cry from the program's humble beginnings of two brothers trying to make a go of it.
We never thought the program would be this big, it's amazing.
