St Catharines, Ont. – Sports – Lakehead Wrestling came away with a silver medal courtesy of Emma Horner on Saturday at the CIS Championships.
Horner, wrestling in the 59kg division, entered the national tournament with two CIS silver medals to her credit already. The fourth year from Sault Ste Marie grappled her way back to the gold medal match again, with a familiar foe in Emily Schaefer of Brock her final opponent.
The bout was stopped twice in the first round for blood on the mat, which was slowly oozing from Horner’s forehead, presumably a result of head-to-head contact with Schaefer.
Horner opened the scoring with one point in the first round, but Schaefer countered with a 2-point take down to lead 2-1 after round 1. Horner had her head taped up for the second round, and succeeded in tying the bout at 2-2 when scoring another point for a passivity violation by Schaefer.
In the end Horner couldn’t get another score, and settled for the Silver medal, as Schaefer was awarded the win on criteria, having scored the higher 2-point move.
In Kelsey Dayler’s bout, she was dispatched in short order by her counterpart from the University of Regina, 11-0, thus placing 4th overall in the 67kg division.
Chris Waltner completed his season with a win in the 5th place match,
Coach Francis Clayton said, “We were represented well at this tournament. We may have fallen a little bit short, but hopefully these results keep our athletes hungry. A few tough matches today, losing on the tie-breaker in the gold medal match, but overall good.”
This weekend was the final outing for Kelsey Dayler, and most likely for Emma Horner as well, both of whom are graduating in the spring.
Clayton continued, “I’m looking at this year’s championships as a new beginning. I received a lot of positive feedback on out program throughout the weekend and the direction we’re headed.”
The Brock Badgers claimed both the men’s and women’s CIS Championship titles.
