Cape Breton's Magazine

Wrestling Leo Gene Donovan, Ingonish: We grew up with wrestling--when we were in Grade 3 and 4 we just wrestled all the time. You wouldn't learn moves. You'd probably just learn the aggressiveness, to get in there and be aggressive. Plus my brothers were wrestlers through high school and through college. (How did they teach aggressiveness?) It's part of you, you don't really learn that. You can't really leam aggressiveness. To a point you probably could. You may only know maybe one or two moves where you take him and throw him over your shoulder, and you try to pin him. You wouldn't know real? ly the point system, but you'd just try to pin the person. It was just a sport the kids could really get into. I really liked it, Between Grade 7 and 8 I started to fade out. I said, "Aw, I don't have time for this." Because if you really want to be? come a good wrestler, you have to train all the time. Because it's one of the hard? est sports you'll ever face. It's just two minutes you go on the mat, and it's just full acceleration. Plus, peo? ple think it's just a dumb sport, like some big guy, dumb guy gets out there. You've got to be thinking twice as much. Well, you don't even have time to think. It has to be reflex. You've got to know-- as soon as the person touches you in a spot, you know what to do. That's the thing you don't leam until you get older. In Grade 7, I did slack off. And then when I came down to Cabot (High School), I be? gan to learn more moves. I took a whole new interest in it. When I got in a higher grade and I realized how intricate the moves were, and how many moves there were, I realized, "This is no dumbo sport." And that I wanted to keep with it, (Is wrestling that we see on television like wrestling that we're going to see at the Canada Games?) Oh, definitely not. Wrestling is a gentlemen's sport, really. It goes back to the Romans, for goodness' sakes. It's aggressive. If you leam just a couple things about the point systems, it really makes sense. (Give me an example,) You start off stand? ing, right? And if you take the person down to the mat, you get a point, And how you do it, you may get different level points. (For different ways of bringing him down.) If you throw him at a height, great acceleration--like you get him high in the air, and you come down, carry him-- it'd be a 4-point move. Three would be maybe just two legs that come around waist high. You've got to pick him up, you have good control, jand you come down with him. And then, maybe 2, if you just got behind him and were able to knock him down. And then when you get him down to the mat, there's different ways of getting points. If you roll a person--put his shoulders to the mat, just for a second--you get 2 points, And if you get a maximum of 12 points above the person, then it's called a superiority, 12-point superiority. So you automatically win. You stop, and the person raises your hand. You're declared winner. Now that's one way of winning. You win by points. Or you can win by a pin, of course. You can use pinning moves that are totally different. Where there's only one thing you want to do--pin him. And then you could use quick little moves where you just get him to roll over on his shoulders, right on his back. Just quickly, right? So that you get the 2 points. And then you might let him up again, you might do it again. If a person uses illegal moves or some? thing, he gets a caution. A caution. All right: picking a person up really high. Alpine Skiing Three Alpine Skiers from Ingonish: Sean Donovan, Carla Ingraham, Nadme Arsenault. They will participate in qualifying runs in January, 1987. The top skiers (5 male, 5 female) will become the Nova Scotia team? ''""'''" (9)