By Medicine Hat News on August 20, 2019.
Medicine Hat only had two athletes at the Western Canada Summer Games in Swift Current, but they each came home with a pair of medals.
Kiana Ivey and Dylan Callan helped Alberta’s wrestling teams to gold medal finishes, then took silver in their respective weight classes at the quadrennial games.
For both, it was a great way to wrap up the summer.
“It was very cool. It was just a lot more people… there were people from volleyball and baseball that we saw at the cafeteria, the other sports would come out to watch,” said Ivey, who at 13 was one of the younger competitors in the girls’ 50 kilogram division.
“It was pretty good,” added Callan, about to enter Grade 10 at Hat High. ” Alberta’s wrestling is fairly strong, I would say.”
Callan only had one other entrant in his 115 kg class, that being Manitoba’s Hayden Piche. Piche dominated their first matchup, scoring a 12-2 win in the team competition Friday. But the final, on Sunday, was a much tighter affair, coming down to the scorecards which were 14-9 in the Manitoban’s favour.
“That one was a really great match, everyone seemed to enjoy it. We wrestled hard, went through the whole time and he just barely beat me,” said Callan, who’s now going to focus on football for the next few months. “I learned I need to come out aggressive, be more in to it.”
Ivey’s bracket had three other girls, and again it was a Manitoba wrestler who upended her. She beat Nunavut’s Maggie Ejetsiak 23 seconds in to their lone matchup, and Saskatchewan’s Julia Petryna 2:24 into theirs. But Peytyn Senka got the best of her 3:55 in.
As for atmosphere, the Alberta-Saskatchewan match was the most fun to be a part of.
“One (set of) stands were all blue and the other was all green,” said Ivey. “I kind of fed off their energy.
“I didn’t realize until afterwards how full the stands were. I was pretty surprised.”
Senka won the rematch for individual gold in the first round. All of the preliminary matches comprised the team competition, and Alberta’s boys and girls each went 5-0.
Alberta won the overall medal standings at the games with 299, far ahead of Saskatchewan’s 213 and Manitoba’s 171. Yukon had nine, Northwest Territories six and Nunavut two medals to round out the standings.
For their first multi-sport games, the Gas City athletes got some great experiences, seeing people from other sports and being part of a festive closing ceremonies Sunday.
“It was actually pretty cool,” said Callan. “They had people come out of a random gold medal that was massive, and they brought in a world-class DJ.”
Going forward, Callan will get back in to wrestling once football season is over. Ivey, meanwhile, does judo at a high level and spends time getting better in both sports. She’s hoping to go to judo nationals next year.