A review of SFU’s elite wrestlers
By Clayton Gray
“You wrestle, that’s cool. So, you jump off the top rope and hit people with chairs right?” This is often what you hear when you tell someone that you’re a wrestler. The images of Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Brett Hart are so closely tied with wrestling that the traditional sport of wrestling is hidden behind the large figure of professional wrestling. Due to this, only a few people are aware of the Simon Fraser wrestlers that currently compete at the highest levels of international competition.
There were three SFU students at the International University Sports Federation (FISU) World Championships in Kuortane, Finland over this past weekend. Representing SFU’s men’s wrestling team at heavyweight is Sunny Dhinsa, a freshman from Abbotsford, who won the Junior Freestyle nationals in the last year, Junior and Senior Greco-Roman Nationals, and placed 5th in the Federation International des Lutte (French for wrestling) Associees (FILA) Junior World Championships.
Danielle Lappage is one of the two women representing SFU’s women’s team at 63 kilograms. Danielle is one of the six wrestlers from Canada to ever bring a gold medal home from the FILA Junior World Championships. That achievement alone is enough to place her among the wrestling elite. She adds that to her three individual national championships and a national team title she has helped bring back to SFU.
Victoria Anthony, from Huntington Beach, California, is the third SFU student to compete in the FISU World Championships, at 48 kilograms. Victoria is one of the most accomplished young wrestlers in the world, with one fifth place and two first place finishes at the FILA Junior world Championships under her belt, not to mention a handful of national championships in both Canada and the United States.
Yet, the list SFU’s wrestling elite doesn’t end with those three. There are four other athletes, Justina Di Stasio (fifth place), Darby Huckle, Ashley Topnik, and Helen Maroulis (second place), who have represented SFU and Canada or the United States at the FILA Junior World Championships. Helen also took second place at the FILA Senior World Championships, which took place in Strathcona, Alberta this September.
So, the next time you meet a wrestler from SFU, remember they are more likely to have come off the top of the podium than the top of the turnbuckle.
