Taylor’s meteoric rise continues
Hannah Taylor has made a meteoric rise up the ranks of Canadian freestyle wrestling.
The 20-year-old Summerside, P.E.I., native won silver at her first U Sports championships and has won gold the past two years. Away from collegiate wrestling, the three-time Ontario University Athletics champion is a two-time Canadian junior champion and lost in the bronze-medal match at last year’s junior world championships.
All of the above are great accomplishments but, in most cases, it takes time for achievements at the junior and collegiate levels to translate to success in the senior ranks. Not so for Taylor, who announced her presence at the senior level last weekend in Saskatoon by winning the 57-kilogram division.
“It’s a pretty good feeling because I had a really tough weight class and there were some really good girls in it; all of them who have beaten me and I’ve beaten,” she said. “It was a big day for me.”
The third-year sports management student at Brock wasn’t overly confident heading into the weekend.
“Because I am so young and it is only my first year of senior, I did have some doubts there,” she said. “However, I knew that this year I have been continually getting better and improving in a bunch of different positions.”
Taylor, who represented her province in judo at the Canada Games, knew her competition heading into nationals and felt capable of winning if she wrestled her best.
A better mental approach has helped propel her to a great season.
“I have to accept that you can’t let a loss defeat you,” she said. “I’ve had some pretty bad losses this year to people who I have never lost to so if I had looked at those losses and looked at them negatively, I would have had a different outlook at the end of the year.
“But I took the losses I had and learned from then and ended up beating those opponents at this tournament.”
She admits to being surprised at winning senior nationals at age 20.
“I didn’t think I would win senior nationals by first year until recently when I started to believe in myself,” she said. “But this year my category was very young and everyone on the podium was young.”
Taylor’s win qualified her to compete in the Pan American wrestling championships in Argentina in April, but it didn’t punch her ticket to the Pan Am Games or world championships. Alexandria Town was unable to compete at nationals because of an injury and she will have a chance to compete in a wrestle-off to take Taylor’s spot at the Pan Ams and worlds.
Taylor expects the wrestle-off to take place in July near the time of the Canada Cup in Guelph.
“I am not really rushing to wrestle this girl because I have wrestled her so many times and regardless of the outcome, it’s not going to change how I feel about myself or how I did at this past event,” she said. “Whenever I face her, I face her and if I wrestle well I will beat her. If I don’t, I won’t.”
Town and Taylor have faced each other 11 times and Taylor has won six times.
“We are pretty good rivals and we have some really close matches, some matches where she destroyed me and matches where I have destroyed her,” she said. “It’s unique to have a rival like that.”
Looming ahead this year for Taylor and all the other wrestlers in the Brock wrestling room are the Olympic trials this December in Niagara.
“Whoever wins the wrestle-off will be ranked first in the Olympic trials which is a huge advantage,” Taylor said.
