PAST: John Oliver Jokers
PRESENT: Hugh Marshall Gymnasium
FUTURE: Undecided
Before he won the national juvenile title in the boys’ 58-kilogram class and before he was recognized as the most outstanding male wrestler at the Canadian high school championships in April, Torrey Toribio fought off the socket-seeing fingers of an opponent who wanted his eyes out.
“He reached for my eye and started scratching, started gouging my eye,” said Toribio, remembering the desperation of the silver-medallist. “He had his nails in there, on my eyeball. It felt squishy.”
Leading by eight in the championship bout at Fredericton’s Aitken University Centre, Toribio needed two more points to bury his opponent for the win. But Toribio was caught — and nearly pinned — on a quick throw. “It was pretty sloppy, and I’m upset I got caught up in it,” he said. “I was beating him but if he’d pinned me all the way, that would have ended the match and my lead would have been nothing.”
Toribio resisted, escaped and countered. He’d already won.
“I broke him down mentally. I felt it, he knew it. Everyone knew it,” said the 18-year-old Joker who followed his uncle, Mark Ballon, into the sport at J.O. secondary.
Toribio was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment away from ending the match when he felt those desperate fingers digging into his face. He endured the pain to walk away with gold, leaving his opponent on the mat in embarrassment and defeat.
Ranked the province’s best wrestler in his weight class every year since his Grade 8 season, Toribio nonetheless lost year after year at the B.C. championships. For four years, he failed to achieve what he and countless others expected of him. This winter he met all those expectations and won his first gold at his last provincial meet.
Despite touring with the national junior team and receiving numerous university offers, Toribio will not likely wrestle at the CIS or NCAA level. He could go to SFU or the universities of Alberta, Winnipeg or Regina but is turning all scholarship offers down because he wants to stay close to family and study to become a pediatric nurse — a two-pronged requirement that will keep him in Vancouver where there is no university with both a wrestling team and a nursing program.
His success will be carried forward, however, by giving time back to the Jokers wrestling program — and the seemingly limitless support of coach Chris Fuoco — that helped shape him.
“Everything it’s given me, all the doors it’s opened, I feel it’s only right to give back and help make the program here better,” said Toribio. “My coaches, they’ve sacrificed just as much as I have. When we’re practising, they’re there, too. They’re not paid coaches, it’s all volunteer and I want to thank them and my teammates because they’ve been along for the whole ride. We make each other better.”
