Area high school student Lauren Smith went to Vancouver on a mission.
After finishing second in last year’s National Wrestling Championships, Smith says she returned home focused on finishing first at this year’s event, which ran March 24 to 26 in the West Coast city.
“I had been training my whole season for that tournament,” said the Grade 12 St. Theresa’s Catholic High School student.
With that in mind, Smith says she went into the event very determined, something that helped her best her competition in the women’s 73-kilogram, under-19 division.
“It was definitely an amazing experience,” says the 17-year-old, who’s a member of Orillia’s Mariposa Wrestling Club and had earlier captured the regional high school and Ontario provincial championships.
“Travelling out to B.C. was really fun and I was aiming to win. It was the toughest competition of the season since I had only wrestled one of the other wrestlers before.”
But Smith wasn’t the lone representative of the Mariposa Club grappling at last month’s national championships.
Other local wrestlers representing the club at the national championships include Gracie Blake, Gabriel Boyer, Erica Cleaveley, Braeden Dunbar, Cara Dunbar, Robert Dunbar, Daniel Hancock, Francesco Lo Greco, Tristian Lo Greco, Quinn Belford, Trent Sweet, and Sydney Waller.
Smith, meanwhile, started wrestling at a young age, and quickly demonstrated a natural ability to take down her opponents for the top position.
In Grade 9, after starting wrestling three years earlier, Smith travelled to Germany to compete with Team Ontario. Since then, she’s travelled across Canada and competed in the U.S.
“I like the competitiveness of it, the roughness,” says Smith, who grew up in Victoria Harbour and attended Tay Shores Public School. “I like being able to go into tournaments and be tough and get out some emotions.”
Smith wrestles freestyle, and has tried Greco-Roman wrestling. But when she once wanted to enter a tournament to compete in the Greco-Roman style, there was only one other female opponent, making the competition a one-off.
Smith says that’s because the sport has not historically included a lot of women.
“It’s been male-dominated, because of the physical part of the sport,” says Smith. “In the states, it’s still very male-dominated, and there’s no women’s wrestling in their colleges or universities, but we’re working on changing that.”
Smith, who hopes to eventually become a paramedic, plans to attend college next year where she hopes she’ll be able to continue wrestling at an elite level.
And like most high-level athletes, Smith dreams about one day competing at the ultimate echelon of amateur sports.
“I’ve definitely thought about going into the Olympics,” Smith says. “I don’t know if I’m at that level yet, but I feel like if I keep training I could definitely get there.”
