The wrestling life of Ryleigh
Ryleigh Schweitzer has big wrestling shoes to fill.
Her mother, Megan Schweitzer, was the first girl to win the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships four straight years and she would go on to have a five-year career on the national team. Megan represented Canada at the world championships and was an alternate for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Ryleigh, a 13-year Binbrook resident who will be starting school at Blessed Trinity in the fall, is off to great start in her career.
“I’m super excited,” said Megan, the head coach of the wrestling program at Blessed Trinity. “I have always made them wrestle because it is good for them but this year is a go. I made her come to my high practices and I have entered her in every high school tournament. She has won three of the four that she has been entered in so it has been really good.
“She is loving it and now she wants to focus on wrestling.”
Ryleigh, who is provincial-level trampolinist, has been wrestling since age four but has focused more on the sport this year.
“I liked it and then in the middle I didn’t like it and then I started liking it again,” she said. “I started in trampoline and then I realized I like wrestling more after that.”
Megan sees a lot of herself in Ryleigh.
“She is a mini version of me. She’s feisty and sometimes we butt heads because we think the same. It has been a challenge sometimes because coaching your own kid isn’t easy,” Megan said. “But it has been so much fun and we have made a deal. When we go on the mats, I am her coach and not her mother. It was a transition this year because she has to look at me like I’m a coach in the gym.”
Ryleigh agrees that her and her mother don’t always see eye to eye on the mat.
“It’s more about when she does something and I don’t know what she is doing. I don’t know the move she is doing and I don’t know how to defend it and I get mad because she scores it on me.”
She agrees her mother is a big part of her wrestling career.
“She supports me no matter what, if I win or if I lose. And she tells me what I did wrong and what I did well.”
Mom feels her daughter is progressing quite nicely.
“She has been starting to go to Brock practices and she loves it because Diana Weicker has been wrestling her. She likes it because she has been getting attention from the older girls.”
Ryleigh relishes the chance to interact with world-class female wrestlers.
“I love it. It is really cool.”
She likes most everything about the sport.
“I like competing, going to competitions, and feeling tired afterwards bur feeling good because I won.”
She has lofty goals for the sport.
“I am hoping to go pretty far with it and maybe make the Olympics.”
Ryleigh is one of four girls from Niagara selected to represent the region at the Ontario Winter Games in Ottawa Feb. 9-11.
She is excited about going.
“I am looking forward to competing and seeing what Ottawa is like.”
Athletes were chosen based on their performances at a tournament and a camp in December, followed by wrestle-offs at the various weight classes. The Games are for athletes in Grade 7 to Grade 10.
Other local girls competing in the Ontario Winter Games are: Eden’s Charlotte Bowslaugh at 67 kilograms; Eden’s Jorga Lepp at 69 kilograms; and, Saint Michael’s Zoya Dillon at 69 kilograms.
Ryleigh will be competing at 49 kilograms.
