Let’s send Hannah off in style
The Niagara sporting community is being invited to help give wrestler Hannah Taylor a rousing sendoff as she heads to her first Olympic Games.
The 26-year-old Summerside, P.E.I., native became the 11th Brock Wrestling Club member to qualify for the Olympics in March when she placed in the top two of the women’s 57-kilogram event at the Pan American Olympic Qualifier in Acapulco, Mexico.
The event will be held Saturday, July 27 at Rockway Vineyards during the Brock Wrestling Club’s annual golf tournament. All proceeds from the event will go towards the international travel of Taylor and other Brock Wrestling Club members. Taylor will head to Paris a few days after the event.
There are only a few spots left for golfers — $150 gets you golf, cart, prizes and dinner with a 1 p.m. tee time — but there is still room at the $65 dinner which starts at 7 p.m. The club is also looking for hole sponsors. For more information, contact Marty Calder at 289-213-1770 or Mcalder@brocku.ca.
“We don’t make a dime off of the dinner and I would love to fill it,” said Calder, the head coach of the club. “It just to have people there for Hannah. Just show up and say, ‘Congrats. We are proud of you and good luck.’ ”
He feels it is important to send off Taylor in style.
“It is a big accomplishment to make it on to the Olympic team and she has made St. Catharines her home. We should celebrate that and share our pride in her.”
Calder has been thinking about the Olympic sendoff for awhile and would love to see the city make it a quadrennial event.
“We should really have all the athletes come at one point and do a sendoff. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy but we should recognize them. In the future, we should get them all together.”
Other local athletes heading to Paris are distance run Moh Ahmed, a silver medalist in the 5,000 metres in 2021, and coxie Kristin Kit, who is part of the defending champion women’s eight.
Calder is thrilled that Taylor, who has represented Canada twice at the Pan American Games and once at the Commonwealth Games, is getting to chance to fulfill her Olympic dream.
“There is not a lot of (external) pressure on me but I put it on myself to help these athletes reach their goals. That is my job in different ways but the main thing is on the mat. Right from the start, she had high aspirations of making the Olympics and she had the ability and work ethic,” he said. “Mia (Friesen) has all that and her time will come but once you have someone who has all the tools, it is relieving that I didn’t fail.”
When Calder represented Canada at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics, there were no formal sendoffs.
“I think we did some stuff at my house.”
