SASKATOON – For three decades the mantra for the Saskatchewan Huskies wrestling team has been, “we’ll get them next year.” But last weekend ‘next year’ became ‘this year’ as the Huskies claimed their first Canada West men’s team title since 1986.
This week a new championship banner is hanging proudly in the Education Gym, as if to say, “yes, we finally did it.”
“I knew we had a really good chance this year but I knew it was also going to be really tough,” said second-year athlete Josh Bodnarchuk, who won gold in the men’s 54-kilogram class and was named Canada West male wrestler of the year. “I knew that if we were going to win it, everybody had to step up.”
“When I first came to the U of S I knew this was my goal,” said Josh Bodnarchuk, now in his fourth year with the team. “We wanted to win a Can West title. It hadn’t happened in a long time.”
READ MORE: First championship in 30 years for Saskatchewan Huskies men’s wrestlers
Bodnarchuk and Johnson are among the five Huskies to win gold at the conference championships. But for Johnson, the men’s team victory has special significance.
“My dad and Shane Bradley, our assistant coach, were on that last team to win, so it was a great feeling to end that thirty-year drought and finally bring it back home.”
Thirteen Huskies won individual medals and the women’s squad nearly made it a clean sweep of the team titles, finishing second to the defending champion Calgary Dinos. Still, it’s an improvement over last year’s fourth-place result.
“For the last two months we’ve been talking to both teams, saying that we have a shot at winning, but everyone’s got to step up and do their part,” head coach Dan Olver said. “Unfortunately an injury on the women’s side kind of took us down on points but we were still close enough that I believe if we were healthy, we would have taken it away from Calgary.”
“We had quite a few rookies on our team, we had some girls that had to go up a weight class to fill in everything. There was one weight class that was blanked, so all those odds were kind of against us and we still did so well,” said Annie Monteith, who won gold in the women’s 48-kilogram division.
But the work isn’t done just yet. The national championships will give the Huskies another opportunity to prove they are a team to be reckoned with.
“Saskatchewan isn’t always on the map in the big national tournament so to show that we came from Can West and we won, and now we’re going to do well at CI’s as well,” Monteith said.
The Huskies are brimming with confidence following their performance at the Canada West meet and now they will look to ride that momentum into nationals. A total of 13 Huskies wrestlers will compete in the CIS championships, which take place February 26 and 27 at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.