Friday March 27th 2026
In 2019, I was able to attend the Canadian Olympic Trials that were being held in Niagara Falls Canada with my club team, the Montreal Wrestling Club NTC. While it’s always been my dream to coach at the Olympics, I was strictly there in a support role at that time. My job at the tournament was as an extra driver as well as assisting the athletes with what ever else they needed. While it would have been nice to coach, I had no athletes that I was working with directly and that was okay as it was a great experience to just be able to observe without any added pressure.
The 2019 Olympic Trials was a great experience
All in all, it was a pretty good trials as Linda Morais and Jordan Steen both won their respective divisions, giving them the chance to qualify their weights for the 2020 Olympic Games being held in Tokyo. As I ran into my other co-coaches after the tournament was done, I said congratulations to them as this was a huge thing for both our club and the province of Quebec. Though the thanks were acknowledged each and every time, it was always added with the same refrain that it was a team effort, and that we were all involved in the success of the athletes. The athletes, whom I also congratulated as well, also expressed the same thing.
All of us do our part to help our Olympians achieve their dream
This got me thinking about the importance of working together. Sometimes, we think that our contributions don’t matter but every little bit helps. On the surface, it may seem evident that all teams may work well together, especially the successful ones, but this isn’t always the case. I’ve heard of horrors stories coming out from other clubs from all over the country, in which coaches and athletes are pitted against one another. It comes to a point where all the athletes are essentially divided into camps and each side works to usurp the other as each coach looks to become the alpha figure in this scenario. So clearly, in these situations the ability to work together in those clubs isn’t that strong. I can only imagine the toxicity of that environment and how it must affect the athletes long term.
The World Championships represents the ultimate ability to come and work together on short notice, and with a diverse group (Photo Property of BigJoeWrestling)
While I wouldn’t want to mention these clubs by name, I was surprised to learn that one them was one of the bigger and more well known clubs from around Canada. It seems that while this club can have success on the mat, it’s more in spite of their inability to work together. This might be the exception rather than the norm however as in my opinion, a situation like this is unsustainable.
International Training Camps represent the ultimate ability to work together as different athletes….
Working together can sometimes be easier if the group is relatively small. Case in point, my high school team has roughly twenty five athletes, mostly consisting of only three age groups, two genders and one style of wrestling. I deal with a lot of the administrative stuff and the operation of the club is pretty easy as being part of school dictates what I can and can’t do already. It also gives me assistance should I need it as well. Decisions are made quickly and carried out without too many problems. However, what if the entity is much larger? The logistics of wielding a much larger club can be witnessed by my own journey as an athlete. When I was competing, my club team was smaller and only needed one administrator and two coaches. Things were very centralized and decisions were made quickly, which increased the efficiency of how we ran. Now, the club is almost three times the size, and has more administrators and coaches than ever before. While I wouldn’t say were inefficient, it does take longer to do certain thing. Growth is a good thing, it also has its share of problems.
…….coaches, teams and countries have to be able to work together for the duration of the camp
Growth implies more people involved at all levels, from athletes to coaches and administrators. If everyone shares the same vision, then this isn’t a problem. However, if there are dissenting opinions, then this may compromise the group’s ability to work together. Sometimes this may stem from different visions of how the club should move forward, or sometimes it may be competing egos within the room. Either way, for the long term health of the club, the conflicting parties need to come together in order to allow the club to grow even more.
More people are now involved in wrestling as evidenced by the growth of the Provincial Championships
You often see this when different generation of coaches clash at some point in time. In some cases, we may see the older generation supplanted by the newer one. These new coaches may have some fresh ideas and philosophies and feel that their predecessors may be too stuck in the past and unable to evolve. They may also want to move the team in a different direction, whether it’s to develop better athletes or to increase the size of their membership. This may bring even more conflict and create a rift that may be difficult to resolve as ideas and philosophies clash. Oftentimes, they will not be able to work together and this could ultimately fracture the club as older coaches get pushed out.
The next generation of coaches always come with new ideas and the energy to implement them
However, this is not to say that a group’s ability to work together is affected by the size of a group. After all, you can still have bad actors in a small group. This dynamic in a small group can often be seem when there are special events, which involve coming together to work on something for a short term. Events such as the training camps, international tournaments and the Canada Games spring to mind. These events are only for the short term, but you may get many different personalities that have differing views of the direction of the team, as well what the end goals are. In this instance, the ability to come together and work as a team is critical, but not always easy. I remember my trip to the World Championships and how it was pretty easy for all the coaches to come together. After all, if you can’t do so on the biggest stage, then everyone suffers.
The Canada Games represents crunch time when asking people to come and work together
In the end, whenever you get a group of people, there will be varying levels of conflict. The trick for success in these situations is if egos can be put aside in order to insure the best outcome for the athletes. After all, no matter where your from, if you’re coaching, athlete success is your end goal.