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Badovinac shines in Alberta meet

Alberni wrestler and National Cadet Champion Nolan Badovinac was one of the province’s top performers on the Alberta tour.

Alberni wrestler and National Cadet Champion Nolan Badovinac had a busy holiday season that culminated in him representing BC at several major wrestling events in Alberta this past weekend.

Badovinac didn’t disappoint as he was one of the province’s top performers on the Alberta tour.

To start the holidays Badovinac was at the prestigious War on the Floor Tournament in Langley with his ADSS team. In Langley the grade 10 wrestler from ADSS took a silver medal in the very tough 74 kg weight class. That performance earned him an invite to the provincial camp in Vancouver just after Christmas. This camp is part of the selection process for the BC team for the Canada Games this coming summer.

Badovinac was outstanding at the provincial camp and earned a spot on the BC team selected to travel to Alberta for a training and competition tour Jan. 3-6. On Friday he competed for Team BC at 76kg at the Stu Hart Dual Meets  at the University of Calgary. This event featured provincial high school aged teams from Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.  Badovinac  wrestled 3 tough matches in the dual meets and won all three. Team BC was dominant at the Dual meets.  In the final they defeated  Alberta Gold 43-3.

In addition to his matches in the Stu Hart event Badovinac also wrestled 3 exhibition matches as part of his training. All of these matches were against older and more experienced competitors. Despite losing these matches all went three rounds and were close.  One was against an opponent 10 kg heavier than him.

Leaving Calgary the BC Team travelled to Edmonton where they competed at the Golden Bear Invitational at the University of Alberta.  Here Badovinac and his team mates were wrestling against university aged wrestlers and little was expected in terms of results.  Despite this disadvantage the 15 year old Alberni wrestler won 4 of 6 matches against university wrestlers at 72 kg weight.  One loss came against a 36 year old former National team member who entered in the open competition and the other was to a senior from the University of Calgary. Amazingly Badovinac finished 4th in his weight class.

Badovinac was back at ADSS this week before leaving Thursday with his high school team for the Western Canada Age Class Tournament in Kamloops.  The high school season will be busy for the entire Alberni program including their big Alberni Invitational event in front of the home crowd at the Multiplex February 8-9.  The BC High School Championships are scheduled for Duncan March 1-2.

For Badovinac the weeks and months after the BC’s will be intense. He will attend the Nationals in Saskatoon in early April and in addition he will be attending camps and tournaments with Team BC that include trips to Oregon, Washington, Las Vegas, and potentially Japan this spring.  All of this will culminate in June with the selection of Team BC for the Canada Summer Games in Sherbrooke Quebec in August.  Throughout all of this the young ADSS student will be working hard to maintain the straight A average he has consistently achieved in school.