The competitive fire burns brightly for the third-year University of Saskatchewan wrestler, a gold medallist and most outstanding female wrestler at the recent Canada West championship and medal contender at the upcoming Canadian Interuniversity Sport national championship this week.
No question, she loves to wrestle.
“That hunger for continuous improvement, and that passion, can really make or break an athlete,” offers Dutchak. “I learned that at an early age, from my coach at Holy Cross, Mr. (Dave) Elder, and my past coach (late Todd Hinds) really developed that further and it shows you to love the sport. It’s something that I have and everybody in the (Huskies team) room has, so that’s maybe why we continue to surprise people.”
The Holy Cross grad is one of top wrestlers on the Huskies’ women’s squad, which also includes two-time Canada West outstanding female wrestler Annie Monteith.
“She goes after it,” U of S head coach Daniel Olver says of Dutchak. “She’s willing to fight the small battles and come away with the points. She’s always ready to wrestle. She’s phenomenal. She’s a great athlete who wants to compete. She wants to win. As a coach, that’s awesome. Sometimes, you have to pull her back somewhat. She’s struggled with injuries throughout her career, but, this year, she was able to put it together.”
Indeed, Dutchak battled back to win gold after dropping the first bout of the competition.
It was Dutchak’s first gold medal at the conference championship after earning silver in her two previous appearances.
“They say you win first (gold) and you win third (bronze) but you lose second (silver),” said Dutchak. “To be able to come back and get that gold feels really good and it gives me that momentum going into nationals.”
Dutchak rebounded to prevail in her next three bouts and secure first place at the conference championships in Winnipeg.
“With Katie, it was quite a roller-coaster weekend because she did lose a match, but she came back from that and she was able to score enough points to be able to take down the top-ranked girl,” says Olver.
“Any time you go against a national training centre like Calgary, those wrestlers are always solid. If you take them down, that’s good stuff.”
Defending CIS national champion and last year’s rookie of the year Josh Bodnarchuk took the conference’s outstanding male wrestling honours.
Past winners from the Huskies include coach Olver, Megan Buydens, Bruce Waldner and Andre Regnier.
“It’s a good sign of the quality of athletes we have in the room and what the program is all about,” points out Olver, a Holy Cross grad like both Dutchak and Bodnarchuk.
“Mr. Elder was our high school coach and he moulded and developed all of us,” noted Dutchak. “I gave him a call after we won CanWest and he was pretty happy to see all of us Holy Cross kids win so many awards.”
Dutchak credits her own success to desire and determination, the continuous development, continuous working.
She summer-trained for the first time and it paid off.
“I had those three or four extra months of focus, determination and working on my technique,” she says. “I think that definitely helped out.”
Courtesy of: The Star Phoenix