Wrestlers aim past the top

Dan Plouffe

With the national championships less than a month away, Concordia's wrestlers are well prepared, having as usual dominated the university circuit so far this season.

In recent competitions in London, Ont., Fredericton, Kingston and Guelph, the Stingers have racked up individual titles in their respective weight classes. For someone like Tyler Marghetis, who has won the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championship three years running in the men's 76 kg category, you might think he'd get tired of breezing through his rivals, but that's not the way he looks at it.

“It's always exciting to win on that sort of national stage,” he said. “It's a difficult tournament, so there's always the reward of succeeding at that national level. And of course, it also serves as preparation for the tougher matches in national and international tournaments.”

For Marghetis and many of his teammates, the university competitions serve as little more than a training ground en route to bigger things. As a prime example, Marghetis will be in France and Ukraine before the Feb. 17 conference finals to try his hand against elite international opposition.

He'll be joined on the trip by David Zilberman, the 2005-06 Concordia male athlete of the year, as well as former Stinger Martine Dugrenier. Dugrenier exemplifies the type of performance the Stingers are looking for once they graduate; she's won back-to-back silver medals at the World Championships.

Dugrenier is still coached by Victor Zilberman out of the Montreal Wrestling Club, one of the top wrestling facilities in Canada, where the Stingers also train. Zilberman, who has guided Concordia athletes to 87 individual medals at the CIS nationals, is looking for a lot more than victories out of his wrestlers at university competitions — he seeks perfection.

"You try to work on all the details to get them ready for the next level of tournaments," Zilberman said. "If they wrestle badly at that [international] level, they cannot do well."

The high objectives of the Concordia team have their university opponents clinging to any morsel of success they manage to achieve against them.

“I was surprised that I ended up on top there at one point,” said Adam Ross, after managing to score a single point versus Stinger Jamie Mancini, who otherwise dominated their match at last weekend's Western Open. “I thought I did pretty well considering the reputation he has.”

Mancini won a silver medal in the men's 72 kg class at the 2006 nationals and plans to jump one spot higher on the podium this year. Teammate Hana Askren, a first-year Stinger who previously wrestled for McGill, will also be favoured for a CIS medal in the women's lightweight division.

Meanwhile, sophomore Serguei Guevorkian looks to make some noise this season, along with rookie Patrick Okpalugo, who will be taking over in the men's heavyweight category for David Zilberman.

Zilberman, the coach's son, is unlikely to compete at the CIS level this year. He made it to the semi-finals of the World Championships last year and cruised through the 2006 university nationals without having a single point scored on him. It's all signs of a program that is aiming for — and past — the top of the university circuit.

“I know I can win those tournaments,” Marghetis said. “I can compete against international wrestlers, so now it's just about consistency and continuing to improve to get to that Olympic level.”