A member of the Okotoks Wrestling Club knows a good thing when she sees it.

Miranda Lee Redpath wrestled for the Calgary Junior Dinosaurs Club last season. However, when the club closed its south Calgary location, Lee Redpath was looking for a club closer to her home in Chaparral.

Miranda Lee Redpath grabs the arm of Jazzy Singh at an Okotoks Wrestling Club practice on Thursday at Foothills Composite High School. Lee Redpath, who lives in Calgary, is the lone female high school wrestler with the club. photo by Bruce Campbell

“My school team (Centennial Coyotes in south Calgary) had practiced with Okotoks a couple times last year and I really liked it,” Lee Redpath said. “I really like the coaching here. They teach you the fundamentals and then they show you how to apply them.”

Lee Redpath is the lone high school female wrestler on the Okotoks club. Although Okotoks Wrestling Club coach Doug Watkins would like to have wrestlers from either Foothills Composite High School or Holy Trinity Academy he’s pleased to have a wrestler of Lee Redpath’s quality with the club.

“Because she wrestles for Centennial, she will have to go to the city championship to qualify for provincials,” Watkins said of Lee Redpath, who wrestles at the 48kg weight division.  “I think she is capable of finishing in the top three at cities, so she should get to provincials.”

Watkins will be there to urge her on as he will be coaching her — sort of.

“When Miranda is wrestling at a high school meet, the Centennial coach is in the corner coaching,” Watkins said with a chuckle. “I’m at the side of the mat offering suggestions.”

Coyotes’ coach Adam Sandbeck said he has a good relationship with the Okotoks coaches and he has no problem getting a little help.

“The Okotoks club is smaller than the U of C club, so I think Miranda is getting more personal attention,” Sandbeck said. “It is paying benefits. Right now, there are days when she is getting four hours of wrestling practice a day.”

Lee Redpath practices with the Coyotes throughout the week, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays she will hightail it to Okotoks after the Centennial practice to get some more wrestling in.

When she comes to Okotoks she either wrestles with junior high school grapplers Cassidy Barnert or Abby Watkins. At times she wrestles with Jordan Wallace — a member of Team Alberta last summer at the Canada Games at PEI.

“Girls use more hand control than guys,” Lee Redpath said. “The guys use more muscle, so I have to use finesse. It’s good practice for me.”

Coach Watkins said he expects to have female high school wrestlers from Okotoks in the local club next season because Barnert, a Grade 9 student at Okotoks Junior High School, will attend Foothills Composite High School in the fall.

School of hard knocks

Reid Watkins started out his 2010 wrestling season with a bang. He banged his head, that is.

The Grade 10 student at Holy Trinity Academy got his bell rung in losing his opening match to a third-year university wrestler at 74 kg at the Golden Bear Open on Jan. 9 in Edmonton. He then lost his next match to get eliminated.

“I got my butt kicked,” Reid said. “But I loved it. It was a great experience. That’s how you get better by wrestling against experienced guys”.

Coach Watkins said Reid is being too hard on himself.

“Reid might see it as a butt-kicking but that’s not the way others see it,” Watkins said. “A lot of people were impressed that a first-year high school wrestler got to walk off the matt (not get pinned) against a third-year university wrestler.”

Watkins said Reid might have done better in his second match if he hadn’t bumped his head in his first bout.

“Reid wasn’t quite himself,” Watkins said.

Meanwhile, another Watkins, Spencer, wasn’t seeing stars, but might have been star-struck in the 84kg final at the Golden Bear Open.

Spencer went through his high school career with wrestlers being awestruck when they met him on the mat. The tables were turned when the first-year University of Calgary wrestler faced Jeff Adamson from the University of Saskatchewan Wrestling Club in the 84 kg final.

Adamson is a former Canada West Wrestler of the Year and is an Olympic hopeful in 2012.

“He’s a Team Canada wrestler,” Watkins said chuckle. “Spencer might as well have gone out there with a pen and a pad of paper and ask for his autograph — he didn’t wrestle as well as he could.”

Spencer was beaten 6-0, 6-0 by Adamson.

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