Following a stellar high school and club wrestling career, Cochrane’s Aidan McKeage is off to grapple at the next level with the University of Alberta.
The 18-year-old Cochrane High School Class of ’15 grad begins university, and Canada West University Athletic Association (CWUAA) wrestling, in Edmonton this fall. He’s leaving the room at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre in which he wrestled for several years with highly-successful Cochrane Cowboys Wrestling Club, coached by his dad, James, and Vern McNeice, whose son Callum joins University of Calgary Dinos in the fall.
“It’s going to be different for sure,” says McKeage. “Moving from Cowboys, where I’m one of the bigger kids, to the room where I’m not the biggest guy. I’ll be a small-fish-in-a-pond kind of thing.
“It’s going to be good for my development for sure. It’s going to make me better.”
The multi-sport athlete (wrestling, soccer, track) has been wrestling at anywhere from 69 to 72 kilograms in club and high-school wrestling this season. He is three-year reigning Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association provincial high-school wrestling champion. He was third at club nationals last year and fourth this year. He’s last year’s Alberta Open club champ but was unable to defend this year due to injury. He joins a university wrestling program that won CWUAA in February. University of Alberta has thrown tuition incentives his way to supplement his path to a kinesiology degree and woo him into their room, which he’s grappled in before.
“I went on a couple of trips last year, I went up to U of A a couple of times and trained with them,” McKeage relays. “I competed in one university tournament last year in Saskatoon, which is good. I won my first one and lost a couple of tough ones. It was a good experience, for sure.
“It’s a totally different game there. They’re a lot stronger technically, so I have to improve on that, for sure.”
He’s unsure of the weight he’ll compete at next year, but it will be more than the 72 kg he maxed out at this year. And it won’t be near Cowboys teammate, and now Dinos wrestler, Callum McNeice’s weight class. McNeice wrestles in and around 58 kg.
“I’m a lot bigger than that now. I don’t know what weight I’ll be competing in next year,” McKeage says. “But it won’t be in Callum’s weight, for sure.”
