As wrestling champions, these pre-teen girls from Montreal are challenging stereotypes
Global News
Though the pre-teens are having fun, their achievement is significant in that they're helping to change the face of a sport in which there are so few women competitors.
As her friends watched with amusement, 12-year-old Joy Sepieh struggled to remove a bundle of medals from a green shopping bag at a high school wrestling gym in the Montreal borough of Pierrefonds-Roxboro.
Don’t expect her to know how many medals she has.
“I don’t know,” Sepieh said. “I didn’t count.”
She’s has competed and won in numerous city and provincial championships, including the Jeux de Montréal this year.
The former basketball player, who also boxes, started when she was six years old. Her father, a former wrestler, had signed up her brother at the Riverdale Wrestling Club in the borough.
“A year or two later my coach asked if I wanted to start wrestling and I started wrestling,” she explained.
That was about six years ago. Four years later, Sepieh got her friend Samara Dhanesar to join the club.
“She used to play football,” Sepieh explained. “She seems very sporty and like she might like combat sports.”