With only three tournaments under her belt, Powell River’s Abby Lloyd has taken another national championship title. It is her second and it is in a discipline she only started competing in this year—wrestling.
Lloyd, 16, who has been competing in judo for the past eight years, only just took up wrestling. She entered her first tournament in January and took top honours, securing a spot in the BC Summer Games.
Lloyd and one of her coaches, Kyla Bremner, travelled to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, April 4 to 7, to compete in the 2013 ASICs Cadet / Juvenile National Wrestling Championship.
“I’ve been wrestling for only four or five months so I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect,” said Lloyd. “I was really nervous.”
Lloyd said she decided to enter the national championship tournament because she “had done fairly well” in the regional competitions.
Lloyd was entered in the juvenile category which is for grade 11 and 12 competitors. She went undefeated to win the national title on the first day of the tournament.
On the following day wrestlers were matched up to see who would represent Canada at the PanAm Games in Colombia this year. Lloyd lost that match, but she is not upset by her defeat.
“Even if I had qualified, I don’t think I would have gone because I don’t have enough experience,” she said.
Her coaches are hoping to have Lloyd compete in the Canadian Summer Games in Quebec this summer and participate in a Team BC trip to Austria with its week-long training camp to help her gain more experience.
“Natural talent can only get you so far,” said Bremner. “Obviously, she has it in bucketfuls.”
Lloyd and her coaches will be studying videos of her matches, trying to improve on what she is doing well and fixing up her challenges, together with work on her basic wrestling skills.
While Bremner said the result of the tournament was not a surprise for her, it was for a lot of national coaches because, “She came out of nowhere and won a national title. She’s got lots of options and we just need to do what’s best for her long-term development as an athlete.”
