By JAMIE SHANKS, of the Weyburn Review
Two combatants circle each other, crouched, their arms outstretched. Each seeks to overcome the other through cunning and physical force - nothing more.
The stakes are pretty high. Whoever wins rules the universe.
This, according to the Greek poet Pindar, was the world's first wrestling match. Fought along the river Alpheus at Olympia, it pitted Zeus against his Titan elder Cronus in a classical struggle for supremacy at the dawn of time. Zeus was the victor, and the Greeks held the first Olympic festival in 776 B.C. to honour the occasion.
In case you missed it, that mythical battle is more or less being reenacted every Tuesday and Thursday morning at the Weyburn Junior High. Wrestling, undoubtedly the oldest sport known to mankind, is alive and well here if the 40 students who show up for each practice are any indication.
"It's a number of different things," explains teacher Kevin Butz, who started the program a year ago and has been overwhelmed by its popularity.
"Volleyball and basketball are very popular here, but a lot of smaller athletes don't get a chance to compete because size is a factor. That and the fact that these kids just love the contact."
Why is that? The answer is simple, according to Colin Bechard.
"Nothing is more natural than two kids wrestling," says Bechard, the technical director for the Saskatchewan Amateur Wrestling Association. Bechard, who was in Weyburn on Feb. 16, competed for years at the national and international level and now travels around the province conducting as many as three clinics a week.
"At this level, it's growing," he says while a gymful of local students grapple around him. A 95-pound kid when he began his own career, Bechard had played hockey and football and simply got tired of being pounded; wrestling and its evenly-matched weight divisions was the answer.
"That's what's great about this sport. It doesn't matter what your size is."
Skill is what matters - and strangely enough, many of the moves and holds of the modern sport haven't changed for thousands of years. Artwork dating back as far as 3000 B.C. depicts Sumerians wrestling each other and French cave drawings 15-20,000 years old contain similar images. Almost every early civilization, from ancient Egypt and India to North American native cultures, appears to have engaged in some form of wrestling.
It was the Greeks, however, whom we associate most closely with the sport. Wrestling schools called palestras were a major part of their social life. One philosophical young wrestler named Aristocles enjoyed so much success he was given a new name that became even more well-known, but for different reasons: Plato, meaning "broad shoulders."
Wrestling in ancient Greece wasn't easy. Like other athletes, they competed naked. Biting your opponent or attacking the genitals was not allowed - but breaking your opponent's fingers was.
Today, the sport has developed two main styles: Greco-Roman and freestyle, both of which are modern Olympic events. While Greco-Roman restricts competitors exclusively to holds above the waist, freestyle also allows the use of the legs for throws, trips and holds of all kinds.
There's also something called professional wrestling
"There's no similarity to what you see on TV," says Peter Bell, coach of the newly-formed Pangman Olympic Wrestling Club. An experienced freestyle wrestler, the first thing Bell did with his group of eight students was to let them try their best TV moves on him for a while until they were ready to learn the real thing. "It's a shock to them."
While brute strength is an asset in wrestling, speed and agility are essential. Besides swimming or boxing, there are few sports that demand such total conditioning in every body part.
"Initially I got into it to more or less stay in really good shape," Bell says. "It's kind of nice to do a sport where the onus is on yourself. In wrestling, what you put into it is what you get out of it."
There are other benefits as well, such as discipline and self-confidence.
"Especially for the smaller kids, it's a great way to build self-esteem and stay physically fit as well."
The utter simplicity of the sport is also attractive. There is no ambiguity in wrestling, Butz points out: if you've beaten your opponent, it's pretty clear how you did it.
"The technical part is complex, but at the same time it's very simple," he says. "There's a hundred different moves, but if you can learn three of them and do them better than everyone else, you'll be very successful. And what kid can't learn three things?"
That's Graham Stewart's approach. The Weyburn Junior High student is back for a second year of wrestling on the new 24x24-foot mat provided by the school's parent association.
"You master the certain few that you like," Stewart says. "You have to be tough."
Ironically, many of his fellow participants took up wrestling because it offered them something new, even describing it as an alternative sport - even though it's been around since the dawn of history! It's slow going at present, but fledgling clubs like the ones in Weyburn and Pangman are organizing meets with a handful of others in hopes of attending the SHSAA districts in Indian Head in March or eventually producing provincial champions.
"It's different from anything else we've done," says Pangman's Amber Heath. Heath took up wrestling out of curiosity - and another reason.
"To get my brothers back for all the stuff they've put me through," she laughs.
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