Michelle Ballantyne – No Fear, No Limits

www.krammag.com
Jonas Emilsson

Michelle Ballantyne is in all her glory when she’s making other people extremely uncomfortable, perhaps even inflicting a little bit of bodily pain.

No, she’s not a mob hit-man (woman) or an interrogator for the CIA squeezing information from a suspected terrorist.

But if the CIA were ever in need of finding alternative measures for extracting valuable information from an a thug that was doing his best impersonation of a mime, they may want to consider sending them to meet Ballantyne face-to-face on the wrestling mat.

That’s where the grade 10 John G. Diefenbaker Chief wrestler hosts her own personal torture chamber that has left more than a few victims whose bodies were contorted into un-human shapes, crying uncle ready to divulge anything and everything, as long as it gets them the heck off the mat and into the safety of the surrounding bleachers.

For Ballantyne, who competes in the 50 kg division, the wrestling mat has become a bit of a sanctuary. After trying out several other sports, the athletic wrestling phenom has finally found a sport where she can take advantage of her natural aggression.

Volleyball umpires tend to frown on beating on anything besides the little white leather ball, and in soccer, forget about even laying a hand on an opponent without having a nice red card waved in your face informing you to immediately exit the field.

“It’s kind of weird, but it’s a contact sport and I’m not very good at non-contact sports,” chuckled Ballantyne when asked what attracted her to wrestling. “I used to play soccer and everything but it’s just not as much fun as contact sports. I play volleyball but I don’t enjoy it as much as I do lacrosse and wrestling.”

That’s right, lacrosse, another physical sport that she excels at.

Do you see the similarities? Both sports require extreme levels of athleticism, coordination, stamina, fearlessness and of course, the willingness to lay a beating on an opponent.

“One is with your body and the other is with a stick,” said Ballantyne with a certain level of satisfaction in her voice.

Even though Ballantyne wears a Diefenbaker wrestling uniform, or singlet as the wrestling folks like to call it, she’s actually a James Fowler High School student. But since a wrestling program doesn’t exist at the school, wrestlers are sent a few blocks north to Diefenbaker.

“I know a lot of people who are against wearing other school’s jerseys, but I don’t mind,” said Ballantyne. “I have my Fowler jersey and I have my Diefenbaker stuff, it doesn’t really bother me.”

Ballantyne could have attended Diefenbaker if she wanted to, but her interested in aviation led her to Fowler because the school offers an Aviation and Automotive program, which she hopes will help her to one day become an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer.

When Ballantyne came to the highly-touted Diefenbaker wrestling program as a relative unknown, the coaches immediately saw something special in what she brought to the mat.

“Michelle is lucky because she got it early,” said Diefenbaker’s head wrestling coach Barry Pawlak.

“When I got her she had that sort of indefinable quality that a coach looks for. She had the will and determination and she had some of those intangibles and she had ok technique.”

Naturally, there were some bad habits that needed to be worked on, but luckily for Ballantyne, she was now a member of one of Canada’s elite wrestling programs, which can mostly be credited to the excellent coaching the program receives from Pawlak and his staff. In the past eight years Diefenbaker has won seven city titles and five provincial 4A titles.

The Diefenbaker coaches quickly set out to break Ballantyne’s bad habits and teach her the Diefenbaker way of pinning an opponent.

“There are some things that she does really well and there are some things that she needs work on,” said Pawlak “At the high school level, especially in grade 10, you want to maximize those strengths.”

“What Michelle learned early was to angle her attack, so when she went for a single-leg take-down she would step to the side and attack on a 45 degree angle. That’s something you want your grade 11 and 12 wrestlers to master, and she wrestled a couple of guys in our room who are really good at that, and she was able to develop.”

She found instant success to kick off her first season. But it was a loss in the final match at an early-season tournament that Pawlak identifies as a turning point for Ballantyne.

“The best thing that happened to her was when she lost in the Gold medal match in her second or third tournament.”

Up until that point, Ballantyne had tasted plenty of success having won a novice tournament as well as putting up good results in the quad meet.

“She got beat up pretty good by this girl,” remembers Pawlak. “But when you have good young wrestlers something happens, it just clicks and they become a wrestler, or, the opposite happens and they say this isn’t for me. Michelle got to a point after she lost that match where it was one of those Rubicon moments. After the match she said ‘this medal is never going to see the light of day’. She was so dissatisfied with her performance.”

The gold or bust attitude is what set the stage for Ballantyne’s meteoric rise through the Calgary high school wrestling ranks since that fateful tournament final.

With a new killer instinct evolving in her mind, Ballantyne set out to make a name for herself in the wrestling community. A few tournaments later, she had a shot at redemption against a wrestler who had gotten the better of her in a previous match.

She made an early mistake and almost got herself pinned. But she came out and dominated the second round and eventually won the match.

Cue the city final, where she again faced another much more experience wrestler that she had suffered a loss to earlier in the season.

“Michelle wrestled the girl and technically didn’t make any mistakes and ended up putting the girl on her back to win the first round, and eventually winning the match,” recalls Pawlak.

The one thing that’s challenging for a high school wrestler is that they have to wrestle against other athletes that are in the same weight class, despite of their age. Naturally this means that grade 10 wrestlers don’t often become city champions. Instead, they’re supposed to be gaining some experience, new techniques and confidence to prepare them for their senior year of high school where they take a run at some serious hardware, if they’re good enough.

“The percentages are fairly low because usually the better wrestlers are in grade 11 or 12,” said Pawlak. “Grade 10s that win at that age – sometimes it just circumstance, they wrestle over their heads and don’t really realize what they’ve done.”

“She’s got it and she’s a rising star. I think she’s taken the steps she needed to move out of the pack.”

With a city championship under her belt, Ballantyne moved on to the provincial tournament in High River to face of against Alberta’s top wrestlers.

In an early match Ballantyne faced a very experience wrestler who managed to score an early point. Ballantyne spent the rest of the match trying to square the score, but her opponent went into a defensive shell to eventually win the match. The loss put Ballantyne into the bronze medal match, which she ended up winning.

For Ballantyne, the result was disappointing, but in reality it’s a phenomenal result for a young wrestler who’s now on the radar as one of the up-and-coming wrestlers in Canada.

And according to her coach, she has a shot becoming a member of Canada’s Olympic team in the near future if she keeps progressing at her current rate.

“I was involved in the national wrestling program for a while, and I look at a girl like Michelle and I think she’s got what it takes for her to be in the mix to be able to compete for one of those roles,” said Pawlak.

“Having seen what I’ve seen and having the experience that I have I think that she would be somebody that you would look at and say she has what it takes to get to that level. Because the numbers in terms of female wrestlers in the country are what they are, she has a chance to really shine.”

“She is on the cusp of the radar for 2016.”

But despite having oodles of natural abilities, Ballantyne is quick to realize that if she absorbs the knowledge being spouted by her coaches, she’ll be doing herself a huge favour.

“If I didn’t have the coaches that I’ve had in the past I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I’m at now,” said Ballantyne. They pay attention to the way that I learn and they adapt to that. They’re always trying to get things to work for the individual, which is a lot better than doing the group thing for somebody who doesn’t learn the same way.”

Thanks to Carol Huynh, the Canadian wrestler who captured Gold for Canada at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, Ballantyne now has a wrestler to look up to.

“She did what I could do in a few years,” said Ballantyne.

With Huynh as a role model and a coach that believes in her in, Ballantyne’s sky is the limit.

“It’s an amazing feeling when someone tells you that you have the possibility of going to the Olympics,” said Ballantyne, “It makes me work harder and keep going at what I’m doing.”

“My grandparents have always told me that they want to see me compete in the Olympics, and my coaches have been talking about that if I keep working towards it, it’s a possibility.”

Kram 5 with Michelle Ballantyne
What is your favourite pre-match meal? Chicken
What is your favourite movie? SWAT
Who is your favourite actor? Johnny Depp
What is your favourite type of music? Country
What is your dream car? An old pick-up truck