Thursday February 19th 2026

So with Thursday’s Championships coming to a close, the current edition of the GMAA/RSEQ season finishes off. On the horizon, will be the GMAA/RSEQ All-Start Meet, held at John Rennie High School, and the Provincial Championships which will be held later on in March at the Centre Claude Robillard. This is a departure for both events as the All-Star Meet is usually held before the finals and the normal date for the provincials usually tends to be in the third week of February. In the case of the All-Star, this was done in order to hopefully reduce the risk of injuries heading into the finals. The earlier date for the provincials was to coincide with the fact that most of the high school leagues are still training at this time. Time will only tell if holding the All-Star Meet afterwards is a good thing and if this later date will affect the attendance at the Provincial Championships. The numbers have been growing in the last couple of years so hopefully it won’t. But that’s a blog for another time. Here are some thoughts from the season and the finals.

The Venue

The finals were held at Pierrefonds Comprehensive High School, which was an excellent venue as far as size goes. A small side note is that the last time PCHS played host to the GMAA finals was in 1992! Coincidentally, this is also the first time I won the GMAA finals (yes, I know I’m really old, get over it!). With four mats in use, the GMAA continues its steady growth as more teams participated in the finals than the previous year. A lot of time and organization goes into hosting a tournament and PCHS should be commended for the job they did in hosting as the accommodations were great for a school that hadn’t hosted a finals in over thirty years! Hopefully, the next year’s host will continue to improve on the job of PCHS, which will further mirror our growth of our league as a whole.

The venue was a great one

New schools join the league

This year for the the first time ever, three French schools were a part of the league. Joining École Secondaire P.G. Ostiguy, were newcomers École Secondaire Louis Riel and École Secondaire Monsignor-Euclid-Theberge. These two new schools saw some impressive coaching pedigree and got some good results for their first time. École Secondaire Louis Riel was coached by 2025 Team Quebec Coach Amanda Savard while Nathan Rainville and Rose Forgues, two athletes with a lot of success at the National level, coached École Secondaire Monsignor-Euclid-Theberge. This is a huge step in the right direction as one of our longtime goals for the GMAA league, as well as at the provincial level, was to increase the participation of French schools. Hopefully next year, we can build upon this and add some more schools. Only time will tell if we can continue to grow to the level that it was at when I was an athlete at the GMAA, which saw larger teams and was comprised of eighteen to twenty one schools.

It wasn’t too long ago that Howard S. Billings was the new school in the league

The District Finals

For the first time in the history of the league, we held a mini-tournament or playoff if you will to determine who would qualify for the finals. This has been something very different in that we’ve always allowed every competitor to have a place at the finals. With the league growing in size, and the championships finishing later and later, the motion was put forth at the beginning of the year to have a qualifying tournament. While a whole host of issues would come up that we didn’t anticipate, I think the overall concept was a success. When trying something new, it’s very hard to get it on the first try. However, only time will tell what the coaches thought about this as we move towards the Post-Season meeting.

The District Finals provided another tournament for our athletes

My individual athletes

Due to a conflict with my school’s Science Fair, I showed up with a team of only two athletes. This comes down to the classic argument of academics versus sports. As an educator, I will always support the academics first. However, I don’t understand how accommodations couldn’t be made for my athletes to leave early. Given the fact that in that past, my school has made similar accommodations for athletes to miss the Science Fair for sporting events that weren’t even a part of the school, this cuts a little deep! I’m not sure what the rationale was for this but I would hope that this is not a situation of rules for some, and not for all. I wonder how many teachers/coaches have run into this problem before with their respective schools?

I coach many athletes, both from my school and at the National Training Centre

My concluding thoughts

All in all, this has to be considered a successful season. The league continues to grow and the quality of wrestling increases  every year. New coaches come into the field with new ideas and help us to grow as a whole. My second year as chairman was a learning experience as well and hopefully this upward trend will continue for the foreseeable future.