Plans taking shape for Horns wrestling

By Lethbridge Herald on April 21, 2023.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

Even though there is still months to go before the team begins competition, the University of Lethbridge Pronghorns wrestling team  are well into planning for their inaugural season.

The Horns team was announced last month in partnership with the Lethbridge Amateur Wrestling Association and will hit the mats this fall.

Head coach Shawn Daye-Finley

 thinks everything is going great  in terms of recruitment.

“Actually a lot better than we had anticipated,” said Daye-Finley.

“There’s a lot of excited wrestlers in that age group in the community of southern Alberta  (and beyond) that are interested … in wrestling for the Pronghorns. We’re excited to see who shows up in September ready to go.”

The wrestling team has recruits coming out from Saskatchewan, LCI, the other local high schools in the area and Calgary.

“I can’t produce any names for you right now because it’s all hush hush until the announcements are made public,” said Daye-Finley.

“We will have a social media group (where) we’ll be releasing those names and celebrating those athletes’ choice to wrestle for the Pronghorns.”

“Previously like our wrestlers in the high school age category here Lethbridge have had to move away in order to wrestle in this league at the USPORT level,” said Daye-Finley.

“And I mean just recently, (in) the last couple of years we’ve had to send some kids away that would’ve loved to have stayed in Lethbridge. So that’s a key feature for us is now the athletes don’t have to be sent away. They can wrestle at home and represent their hometown and the University of Lethbridge, which for some of them was beyond a dream.

The club will have an open-door policy.

“So in the month of September I’m planning to have an identification camp or like an open to anybody,” he said.

“Even those who have never wrestled type of clinic, where people can come in, try it, get introduced to it ,and that it’s from the university and then decide for themselves if they’d like to start practicing.”

Any male of female that has graduated high school can participate in the university program.

The team is focusing on fundraising.

“We’re looking to draw in the various stakeholders in the community that are interested in seeing a Pronghorns wrestling program get going,” said Daye-Finley

“We’re a self-funded group.  We have some advertising opportunities for organizations interested in seeing their logos on our uniforms and we have opportunities to get logos on our actual wrestling mats. We’re working through those details. As you can imagine there’s a lot of rules to follow and abide by and make sure that we don’t fall outside of those boundaries. So right now we’re planning a lot of different fundraisers and recruitment strategies to help get people here to represent the Pronghorns.”

The funds raised will go to new wrestling mats with the U of L colours, event sponsorships being worked on currently and uniforms.

“A lot of it’s  going to come out of the pockets of the athletes at this point as we’re a non-for-profit based,” he said.

“But we’re working through it now through these next couple of months to set the kids up for success in the fall.”

More information on helping the program can be found by emailing horns.wrestling@uleth.ca.