Survival School meets on the mat

The Kahnawake Survival School (KSS) wrestling team took part in an exhibition meet with Massey-Vanier High School last Wednesday in Cowansville, with both teams looking to sharpen their skills before the holiday break on the road to the Greater Montreal Athletic Association (GMAA) tournament in February.

“The coach for their team asked me if we wanted to do it, just to have something happen before the kids go on Christmas break, which is what I was looking forward to doing,” said Brandon Stalk, head coach for KSS’s wrestling team.

Both teams matched up pretty well on paper, according to Stalk, so he accepted the offer to have the team go to Cowansville for the meet.

While it was an exhibition, and the teams did not officially keep score, Stalk said that KSS performed well, winning five of nine matches.

“Our guys wrestled pretty well. I was happy with what I saw,” said Stalk. “They have a pretty good understanding of the basics, and they executed them pretty well.”

Stalk said that, compared to when training started, the team is showing improvement both on offense and, especially, on defense.

“Defense was something I was focusing on with them for the last two weeks,” said Stalk.

This year, KSS has wrestlers in 13 of the 15 weight classes teams compete in and have more than one wrestler in three of those weight classes.

Stalk said that the number of wrestlers on the team this year means they could be one of the top teams come GMAA time – due to the official points system, not having a wrestler in a weight class is a penalty of five points, severely tanking their point totals in past tournaments.

“That’s our main tournament. That’s the tournament where KSS used to win the whole tournament every year for like, 20 years,” said Stalk. “It’s the one we want to do well in again.”

KSS’s squad is relatively inexperienced still, as almost half the athletes are rookies. Some even wrestled their first ever non-practice matches against Massey-Vanier. But, Stalk said, the team has a lot of fast learners.

“Some of our rookies are very athletic, and they’re picking up the sport very fast,” said Stalk. “With what I see now, I’m able to start teaching them a lot more things. We’re going to start adding on to their offensive moves, and I think by the time we get into February, we’re going to see another improvement in their technique.”

Still, nothing beats experience for Stalk.

“They need to get used to that pressure of being in a real match and going for it, and they can only get that by having more meets,” said Stalk. “So that’s why the one last week was important to us.”

KSS brought 14 wrestlers to the meet, and with Massey-Vanier not having enough wrestlers for every weight class, some KSS teammates went against each other.

“That worked out pretty well. They were even matches. Our guys got some decent mat time,” said Stalk.

Stalk is hoping to organize more meets once everyone gets back from the holidays. For now, he is happy with how the exhibition with Massey-Vanier went – and would gladly do it again with them.

“It was a really good week for us, and I’m glad he invited us over. We’ll definitely try something like this again, and maybe next time it will be at KSS,” said Stalk.

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