First the town, then the world.
Increasingly, Cochrane’s athletes and coaches are departing the realm of small-town sports for the much larger theatre of global competition.
Canadian luger Tristan Walker, a keynote speaker at Cochrane Sport 4 Life’s awards banquet April 12 at Cochrane Ranche House, spent the last year sliding down ice-coated trenches from Whistler, B.C., to Sochi, Russia. The high-velocity, high flyer has more air miles than Vlad Putin has self-induced headaches.
Busy in the Paralympic movement, Canadian Chef de Mission Ozzie Sawicki and Canadian Paralympic ski coach Mike Marsh have also had their passports stamped a few times over the last 12 months. Fellow Cochrane resident and Team China freestyle ski coach Murray Cluff has been jetting between North America, Asia and Russia.
Enter the Cochrane Cowboys wrestling club.
Quietly thriving on the mats of Alberta’s amateur wresting arena, the little club that could has produced prodigious teen grapplers now headed to places like Brazil and Slovakia to take on the world’s best Cadet (14/16-year-old) wrestlers at Pan-Ams in May and the world wrestling meet in July.
No small feat for a boutique-grade club in a low-profile sport toiling in a town of 19,000. But the Cochrane Cowboys haven’t let the comparative obscurity of their sport and their town define them. They’ve always gone big.
Over the last year, the Cowboys have hosted regional, provincial and international wrestling meets. Their “Save Olympic Wrestling” event at Spray Lake Sawmills Family Sports Centre (SLSFSC) last winter drew hundreds of competitors and spectators, including Canadian Olympic gold-medallist Carol Huynh and Canadian multiple world-champion Christine Nordhagen.
The Japanese wrestling team was in Cochrane in January, bringing their high-skills international high-school wrestling to the mats at SLSFSC.
When they aren’t hosting major events, the Cowboys are travelling across Alberta and Saskatchewan for regional competitions, and to Guelph, Ont., for the recent national meet where two, possibly three, wrestlers vaulted to global competition. Callum McNeice was even spied high-fiving Prime Minister Steven Harper at the 2013 Canada Summer Games opening ceremonies in Sherbrooke, Que.
It’s this kind of thinking, and doing, that has Vern McNeice and James McKeage’s athletes going global. A nod goes to St. Timothy School Thunder wrestling program under Andy Macri and Alex Green, who are also up to their elbows in Cochrane wrestling and who share in the success of Callum McNeice, Brendan McKeage and Connor McNeice.
When the Cowboys aren’t wrestling with the club, many are doing it for the Thunder. Not one to toot his own horn, nor that of his Cowboys club, coach McNeice is just grateful for the success his athletes’ dedication brings.
The results speak for themselves. And the world is listening.
