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Capilano Wrestling Club members grab national titles

Karah Bulaqui leads the way with gold medal win six months after getting injured in a serious car crash

Several wrestlers from the North Shore’s Capilano Wrestling Club — including one coming back from a serious car accident — grabbed medals at the Cadet/Juvenile Canadian Championships held April 9-12 in Fredericton, N.B.

St. Thomas Aquinas Grade 11 student Karah Bulaqui led the way in winning a pair of titles in the 40-kilogram class. Bulaqui won the juvenile girls (Grade 11-12) national title while also claiming top spot in the FILA Cadet (Grade 9-11) trials — a competition held concurrently with the national championships — to qualify for a spot at the Cadet World Championships scheduled for Aug. 25-30 in Sarajevo. She claimed the two titles despite being involved in a serious rollover car crash in mid-October that left her with a broken collarbone and fractured shoulder blade.

“She was fortunate that she made it out alive,” said Andrew Jessiman, one of the Capilano clubs main coaches along with Kate Walker and the father-son duo of Ian and Mike McDonald. “She missed most of the season with those injuries. She worked her butt off in rehab.”

Bulaqui was cleared for full-contact training just one week before the provincial high school championships held at the end of February. Despite the very limited training time Bulaqui still finished second at provincials and then set her sights on nationals where she looked closer to her old self.

“She looked sharp,” said Jessiman. “She looked like she didn’t miss a beat. She said she didn’t feel as strong as she felt in the past, which would be expected, but she looked out-of-this-world good.”

Joining Bulaqui as a double gold medalist was Amara Jarvinen, one of the youngest competitors in the field. The Grade 9 Windsor student already claimed a senior high school championship earlier this season and continued her dominance by winning the cadet girls (Grade 9-10) national title as well as the FILA Cadet trials in the 65-kg division. Jarvinen is also a high-level soccer player and judo athlete.

“She’s just an all-around monster of an athlete,” said Jessiman. “I won’t wrestle her. She’s scary. When she throws you, you know you’ve been thrown. You’re losing your wind if she throws you.”

Jarvinen may be young but she is showing skills on the mat for beyond her years, said Jessiman.

“She picks everything up very quickly,” he said. “She does so many things so very well, but I think once she gets more used to the mat and more used to just the rules of wrestling, the sky is the limit for her. She won provincials at senior as a Grade 9 and then she went on to nationals and won nationals. I can’t really say she’s just scratching the surface when she’s already that good.”

Both Jarvinen and Bulaqui earned spots on the Canadian team for the Cadet World Championships, although with funding considerations and other questions, neither is certain to make the trip, said Jessiman.

Marlena Woldring made it a trio of national champion girls for the Capilano club, winning gold in the cadet 80-kg freestyle division and silver in the Greco-Roman event. Woldring is a Vancouver resident who attends Notre Dame secondary but trains on the North Shore with Capilano. The club’s trio of national champion girls carries on a long tradition of strong North Shore female wrestlers, said Jessiman.

“There’s a very long list of female wrestlers from the North Shore who go on to wrestle in the CIS and for different universities,” he said.

On the boys side STA’s Grade 12 student James Sutherland led the way for the Capilano wrestlers, following up a provincial bronze with silver at nationals in the juvenile 63-kg class.

“I’ve never seen him work so hard in his life,” said Jessiman, Sutherland’s coach at STA, of the wrestler’s preparation work heading into nationals. “He just put it all on the line leading up to it.”

Sutherland’s biggest highlight came in the semifinals where he scored a last-second, come-from-behind win over former national champion Cristoff Coles from Alberta.

“It was an absolute war. It was great. It was pretty much the match of the night,” said Jessiman. “Very, very few wrestling matches are as exciting as that one. I hate to say it but a lot of wrestling matches can be somewhat boring. But this one was high-scoring — it ended 15-14 — they had to stop for blood time, there were some questionable calls by the officials; every possible dramatic thing that could happen did happen in that match. It was a great way to end a high school career.”

Sutherland also finished fifth in the Greco-Roman competition. Other Capilano results included Argyle’s Hamish Pye scoring a sixth-place spot in the juvenile boys 63-kg class and Elphinstone’s Siobhan Stipec grabbing fourth spot in cadet girls 60-kg freestyle.

Overall it was a strong showing for a relatively small club, said Jessiman.

“It’s a ridiculously talented wrestling pool that we have for a pretty small community,” he said. “To have the success that we have at the provincial and national level from one small area is just really rare. It speaks volumes to the effort of people like Ian McDonald, who has been doing this for 30 years.”