Nunavut wrestler goes for gold at Canada Summer Games

Sometimes Eekeeluak Avalak’s wrestling matches don’t evolve so much as they explode.

Where other contests need a few moments to take shape — a move to the left, a shift to the right, someone reaches for a shoulder lock, the other one moves to block — Avalak often starts like a racehorse out of the gate.

It took only 13 seconds for the Team Nunavut member to win his first match at the Canada Summer Games on Tuesday morning in St. Catharines, Ont.

Avalak’s unbeaten record at the games means he advances Thursday to the individual semifinals and, possibly, a shot at a gold medal.

Team Nunavut has only one medal to its name since joining the Canada Games in 2001: a bronze in judo at the 2007 winter games.

Avalak’s next match is against Zubin Gatta, of British Columbia, at 10:30 a.m. A win advances Avalak to the gold medal match, and with a loss he competes for bronze. Those matches are scheduled for 2:30 p.m.

Team competitions wrapped up Wednesday. Nunavut’s men finished 11^th, while the women’s team placed 12^th.

“It’s my first time being at the games, in those matches I was overly excited,” said Avalak — Eekee, to his friends — of his fast-start style.

“I’m going to try to take it a bit slower and feel out my opponents as the competition gets closer to the semifinals.”

Fast starts are good, said Team Nunavut coach Chris Crooks, but they can be risky.

“We’ve worked on that to sort of calm those nerves down,” Crooks said.

“It’s as much physical as it is mental, and the top six wrestlers — they’re all there physically, but it’s whoever has that game strategy and that mental ability on that given day.”

Avalak has a good shot at a medal in the 52 kg division, Crooks said, “but as I tell everyone, nothing is ever written in stone in sports.”

The 18-year-old wrestler is from Cambridge Bay where he’s a member of the wrestling club that Crooks runs.

At the 2019 Western Canada Summer Games he won silver in the individual competition, and at the 2018 Arctic Winter Games he earned gold in Inuit wrestling, silver in overall individuals and shared bronze in the team competition.

Avalak was Nunavut’s male athlete of the year in 2020.

Crooks said Avalak is a leader on the team, whom the other wrestlers look up to because of his wider experience and accomplishments and also his attitude.

“He’s gregarious, he’s charismatic, that’s his natural tendency,” the coach said. “He’s a people person … and he encourages other people to do good.”

Avalak started wrestling when he was 12 years old. Back then, he said, he knew about Ultimate Fighting Championship and the World Wrestling Entertainment, or the WWE. He’d never heard of freestyle wrestling though.

He tried it for a week and didn’t think much of it. A year later, after the team went to the territorial championships in Iqaluit and he discovered wrestling might give him the chance to travel and meet people.

“So I went to practice every day, being committed and doing what my coach told me to do,” Avalak said.

It’s hard to maintain the day-in, day-out discipline of training, lifestyle and attitude, especially when you live in a remote northern community, he said.

“It’s very difficult, but then I think of my ancestors,” Avalak said.

“They had one of the harshest conditions ever to live in. They went days without food and they still had to keep up with their dogs, if not they’d be left with no transportation.

“So I just think of my ancestors during those hardships, and that’s what gets me through my workouts in the times when there’s no one watching.”

Then he echoes what other Nunavut athletes have said during the games — that they are inspired by their home territory, and want to bring victory home with them.

“You’ve heard of residential schools. There’s a lot of intergenerational trauma,” said Avalak. “I have three of my family members who went through residential schools, and that weighs a lot on me — not just them, but the generations afterward.

“So there’s a lot of stuff happening, I have a lot on my mind right now,” he continues, and for just a moment starts to choke up a bit.

“It was my brother’s birthday a few days ago, and he’s not here. So I dedicated the games to him. I have my teammates, so that’s the closest thing to a family.”

Wrestling, he said, “didn’t just change my life, it saved me. Wrestling will be with me until the day I depart.

“Before I started wrestling, I was going down a path of … if it wasn’t for wrestling, I’d be behind bars or even worse than that.”

He continues: “My coaches gave me a reason to change, and that’s wrestling. They gave me that opportunity and here I am now, at the biggest youth sports event in Canada … that means so much to me.”

Canada Summer Games events are livestreamed at niagara2022games.ca/watch.