The weeks that book-end the March break are among the busiest on the provincial high-school sports calendar, with almost 20 separate OFSAA (Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations) titles up for grabs - a number that does not take into account the individual sport endeavours where dozens of gold medals will be doled out.
Take wrestling, for instance.
With Kane Chartrand (Bishop Carter) having snapped, last March, a brief string of OFSAA Wrestling Championships meets that left Sudbury without any hardware to celebrate, there was hope the 2026 competition would carry the SDSSAA momentum, moving forward.
Bronze medal performances by Sophia Keenan (Lo-Ellen - 64kg), Keenan Duval (Lasalle - 130kg+) and Kyrianne Takouda (College Notre-Dame - 115kg+) proved that the locals were more than up to the task at hand, with Kane Chartrand finding his way to the podium in the ultra tough 64kg class, placing sixth.
For Keenan, a 17 year-old senior with the Knights who is looking to continue wrestling at the OUA level with either Guelph, Brock or Algoma, her recent performance marked a return to form of sorts, clawing her way back after finishing fourth as a grade 10 competitor some two years ago.
“The biggest thing I figured out with my coaches this year was finding an in-between being aggressive but still technical,” she said. “In grade 10, I was going in really aggressive and that’s how I won my matches.”
With 2024-2025 presenting something of a stagnation of sorts, it was back to the drawing board for Keenan, who works with coach Erica Turcotte at the high-school level and the trio of Sheldon Burton, Craig Doucette and Celeste Rodrigues with the Wrestling Sudbury Lutte club.
“It took me a year to get clean technique,” she said. “I finally figured out the techniques that work best for me; then I had to start mixing that in during tournaments.”
Still, it’s not as though Keenan was the only wrestler on the mat with a particular game plan in mind. “You don’t know what the other girl is going to do,” she continued. “You might get angry because you don’t like what they are doing. Oftentimes, the emotions get the best of you.”
“Really, just trying to stay calm is the hardest part.”
With provincial club championships taking place a week before OFSAA, Keenan had a pretty good indicator of the upside to her potential, securing bronze in the 65kg weight class. “I just had to shake away the doubts that I had from last year and remind myself that I am a different wrestler now.”
“I felt pretty good going in (to OFSAA), but I did not want to go in cocky.”
And just for good measure, Keenan reintroduced a move that had been a previous source of success, using the “lateral drop” at a few critical junctures over the course of the six bouts that she wrestled (winning five).
“It hadn’t been working so I gave up on trying it,” she said. “Then I spent an entire practice two weeks before OFSAA working on it. I ended up winning a few matches near the end when they were tired with that throw, so I was really happy with that.”
A second victory over Cameron Vollick from Ursuline College was enough to lift Keenan Duval into third place, when combined with wins over Udayvir Sutdhar (Louise Arbour SS) and Kody Haskell (St Patrick - Barrie), with only one loss to Taylum Sandy (Six Nations Polytechnic) to deny his run at gold.
With seven wrestlers in her category, Kyrianne Takouda rode victories over Sunae Lewis (St Mary - Pickering), Layla Higgs (Stamford SS) and Emma Blair (AB Lucas SS - London) to a third place finish.
Kane Chartrand, Tyson Wensley (Lasalle) also picked up three wins at OFSAA, while Karthikeya Kancherlapalli (Lasalle), Maxx Brouseau (St Charles), Daniel Meijer (St Charles), Janelle Jolette (Lively), Keira Harvey (Lasalle) and Lexi Winnington-Ingram (Bishop Carter) recorded two triumphs apiece.
