Women's squad a surprising third at nationals
Wray Maracle
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: Sports
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The Badgers' women team wrestled their way to third place in the CIS Wrestling Championship held at the Bob Davis Gymnasium this past weekend.
Brock's women watched the men's team capture their seventh straight national team title with no less than six Badger men winning gold medals.
The smaller contingent of Brock women's wrestlers finished a strong third, behind Simon Fraser (50 points) and Calgary (34 points) with a total of 32 points.
It was the Clan's third consecutive national team title.
The Brock women finished the tournament by winning gold, silver, bronze and also had two fifth place finishes.
"The women almost broke into the top two," head coach Marty Calder said. "They were only two points behind Calgary, which we thought was not even a possibility. I think they overperformed. Bill Smith and Tonya [Verbeek] have done an amazing job getting the girls prepared. We are going to lose two, but the other ones are all young. There is the good and bad, but we are certainly very positive about our future."
"Most of the [Brock] women are young, in their first or second year," Badgers' assistant coach, Saeed Azarbayjani said. "I'm pretty sure that they're going to be stronger next year."
Saturday afternoon, during the championship matches, Olympic silver medallist, Tonya Verbeek was presented with a portrait of her during an Olympic match by local artist Perry Wakulich.
"Yes, I'm extremely shocked by the presentation," a surprised Verbeek said. "I had no idea. Actually, I was just talking to the artist a few days ago and I said 'so when are you going to do a painting of me?' He had been bugging me a few years before. He had been wanting to get a good action picture of me ... he kept a good secret from me."
Verbeek is still competing and she is helping out as the Badgers' assistant coach.
"I've been helping out in their corner for the whole tournament. We've seen progress in a lot of the girls," Verbeek said.
The Badgers placed two women - Megan Dolan and Heather Sweezey - in the gold medal match, but it was Dolan being the only Brock women to win a Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) title.
Dolan finished her wrestling career off at the university level with an upset victory over number one ranked, Heidi Kulak of the University of Alberta Pandas in the 65kg weight division.
