(Ottawa, ON) Wrestling Canada Lutte is pleased to announce that 2015 Canadian Junior Champion at 51 kg, Emily Schaefer of Brock University has been selected as the recipient of the Bob McLeod Scholarship for the 2015/2016 academic year.

We caught up with Emily recently and had her answer the following questions:

When did you start wrestling, where and who have been your coaches to this point?

I began wrestling in grade nine at my high school. In my first year of wrestling, I won OFSAA and Nationals, and attended the World Cadet Championships in Hungary, placing 12th. My high school wrestling coach was Nick Nienhuis, at Northern CI&VS in Sarnia, Ontario. In grade 10, I also joined the Sarnia Bluewater Wrestling Club under head coach John Burke. Throughout high school, there were many other coaches that invested into my wrestling career and really impacted me.

Last year, I began studying and wrestling at Brock University, with head coach Marty Calder, along with Tonya Verbeek, Bill Smith, Dave Collie, and Chris Prickett. Training with these coaches has allowed me to improve greatly and has opened up many more opportunities in wrestling.

As this CIS season moves towards Conference and National Championships what are your goals and your team’s goals?

At the OUA Championships earlier this month, I placed first and both our Men’s and Women’s team took the team titles.

The CIS wrestling Championships is one of my favourite wrestling events, because of the emphasis on the team aspect of wrestling. That said, my main goal this year is to help my team defend our CIS Championship team title. Of course, I aim to win a CIS individual title this year, but my main focus is the team title.

Is there a specific career area you are looking at now or will that be something you determine further into your studies?

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to have a career in teaching. Once I began wrestling, I decided to pursue teaching at the high school level so that I can also coach wrestling. I am currently in the Concurrent Education program with a major in math.

My high school wrestling experience is something that completely changed my life, so I hope that one day I can contribute to giving other students the same opportunities that I had in academics and athletics.

What aspirations do you have for international success representing Canada?

Short term, my goal is to qualify for the Junior World Wrestling Championships this summer. Last summer, I placed 7th at this competition, so my goal for this summer is to improve on this placing and hopefully win a medal for Canada.

Long term, I would love to have the opportunity to represent Canada internationally at the senior level, and being an Olympic team member would be the greatest honour.