U of Regina Cougars wrestling program cuts are startling

The Cougars wrestling in the Carillon from 1997.

    There has to be a comeback like the one Josef Tesar Jr. made at the 1998 U Sports wrestling nationals.

    Back when U Sports was known as the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union, Tesar from the University of Regina Cougars trailed Chad Pearson of the University of Guelph Gryphons 10-2 in the gold medal match of the men’s 61 kilogram division. Pearson was one successful move away from winning the bout on technical superiority.

    Tesar miraculously battled back and earned enough points to win the match 15-10. In the process, the Cougars men’s wrestling squad won a national team title for second straight year.

    That one moment symbolizes the fight, the competitive drive and heart athletes have shown during the storied history of the Cougars wrestling teams in both men’s and women’s squads. Due to those efforts, the University of Regina was traditionally viewed as a wrestling school. Culturally, that aspect gives the U of R something that makes it distinct from most other post-secondary schools in Canada.

    Squads like the U of Regina Rams football team and the U of Regina Cougars women’s basketball team may get the majority of the spotlight, but it is always in the back of minds of locals in Regina that the sport the school is really good at is wrestling. When you saw the members of the Cougars teams hit the mat, you were quickly impressed by the skill they displayed.

A Cougars wrestling team feature from the Carillon in 1997.

    The Cougars men’s team has won 10 Canada West Conference championships, with the first coming in 1989 and the last in 2012, and two U Sports national titles in 1997 and 1998. They finished second in the team standings at nationals four times and placed third four times.
    The Cougars women’s team has finished second twice in the team standings at U Sports nationals.
    Both the men’s and women’s teams have had numerous individual conference and national champions. The women’s side doesn’t have as lengthy a history only becoming an official sport in U Sports in 1998-99.

    Bob McDougall claimed a U Sports national individual gold medal in the men’s 57-kilogram class in 1987 to become U of Regina’s first national champion in any sport.

    Lease Bertram, who was the U of R’s male athlete of the year in 1998 and was once part of Canada’s national team program, was in my opinion the best male athlete that school has ever seen and was a key member of both Cougars men’s team national championship winners. Individually at nationals, he won silver in the 65-kilogram class in 1997 and gold in the 61-kilogram class in 1998.

    Ali Bernard became the most decorated out of any of U of R women’s athletes compiling a lengthy resume of accomplishments that includes four individual Canada West titles and four individual U Sports championship gold medals from 2004 to 2008 with the women’s wrestling team. She was named the U of R’s female athlete of the year for three straight years from 2005 to 2007. 

The Carillon after the Cougars men’s wrestling team’s second national title.

  Bernard came from New Ulm, Minnesota, to be a member of the Cougars wrestling program.

    This past season at U Sports nationals, the Cougars women’s team finished fifth in the team standings, while the Cougars men’s team placed eighth. At the school’s athletic awards night in April, Lucas Hoffert of the Cougars men’s wrestling team was named the winner of the U of R’s highest individual honour in the President’s Award for outstanding achievement in athletics and academics.

    With how decorated the Cougars wrestling program is, it was shocking that both the men’s and women’s teams were cut from the U of R’s athletics program on Monday. The U of Regina Cougars men’s volleyball team, which is one of the school’s original six teams with men’s wrestling, was cut from the athletics program as well.

    The moves were made in response to a review of the U of R’s athletics department that was released in January of 2017, which suggested cutting teams in order to concentrate the saved funds on the remaining athletic squads.

    In a written response to the review from March 16, 2017, Vianne Timmons, who is the president and vice-chancellor at the U of R, said the portion of the review the pertains to the number of teams won’t be considered until a permanent head of athletics develops a “robust performance evaluation process.”

Lease Bertram accepting the U of R’s male athlete of the year award in 1998.

    At the time of Timmons’ letter, Tanya Reynoldson, who is an alumna of the Cougars women’s hockey team, was interim director of athletics. In July of 2017, Calgary, Alta., product Lisa Robertson was named the U of R’s new director of sport, community engagement and athlete development.

    With Robertson on staff for less than a full year, the U of R appears to have figured out a process to evaluate and reduce its number of athletic teams. The way decisions are made at universities are often convoluted, but with the brevity it took to make cuts, somewhere there might have been a pre-conceived decision at the start to cut the programs that were cut.

    The review suggested trying to get the ratio of male athletes to female athletes down to one-to-one for the overall athletics program as there were more male athletes on campus compared to female athletes. There were 18 members on the Cougars women’s wrestling team and 14 members on the Cougars men’s team last season, so cutting those programs did not get the ratio closer to one-to-one.

    Judging by the local media reaction in Regina and area, it appears the athletes from the three chopped programs were caught off guard.

    The Cougars men’s volleyball has struggled to post as many as four wins in any regular season for almost three decades. Since full-fledged regular season play between all western Canadian university volleyball teams happened in 1996-97, the Cougars have consistently finish in the bottom three in the overall standings.

The Carillon after the first national team title by the Cougars.

    Still, Greg Barthel, who became the men’s volleyball head coach in May of 2007, and his team have worked hard to make community inroads in the local Regina volleyball scene, and all that work seems for naught.

    Where the original release seems really heartless about the reduction in teams revolves around legendary Cougars wrestling head coach Leo McGee. He is not even mentioned at all.

    McGee became head coach of the men’s wrestling team in the 1985-85 campaign and has been the only head coach the women’s wrestling team has known since forming as a club team around the middle of the 1990s to becoming a full Cougars team in 1998-99.

    Saying he was instrumental is likely a descriptor that doesn’t begin to describe the impact and importance he has had on the wrestling teams. Beyond that, he is the school’s most veteran head coach and is tied to the fabric of university life at the U of R. It seems like everyone has at least one great McGee memory if they attended that institution.

    It felt like he knew who everyone was on the other athletic teams too. You would often see McGee making an upbeat pitch to athletes like Rams football star Jason Clermont and Cougars women’s basketball star Cymone (Bouchard) Bernauer about joining wrestling even just for conference or nationals. He would say he could help them win medals noting he wouldn’t have to teach either many moves.

    Those meetings always brought a chuckle from the athletes, and they also came away feeling better about themselves going back into activities involving their own sports.

    In the history of sports at the U of R, McGee was as important as Canadian Football Hall of Fame head coach Brian Towriss was to the University of Saskatchewan Huskies teams. Towriss had a similar rapport with athletes from other sports at the U of S like McGee does at the U of R.

The Carillon with a classic slogan for a headline.

    When Towriss departed and ultimately retired from his position at the U of S in December of 2016, that institution was criticized and hammered for how awfully that situation was handled, and at one point, his departure was the number two trending story in Canada.

    U of R athletics always has a drive to beat U of S athletics. If this is how McGee’s career at the U of R is going to end, U of R has trumped U of S in finding a worse way to handle a legendary coach departure.

    Braydon Johnston, who finished his second season with the Cougars men’s wrestling team, told Steven Wilson of Golden West Radio in Weyburn, Sask., on Tuesday that the coaches from U of R’s cut teams have been instructed not to talk to the athletes. As a result, Johnston hasn’t spoken to McGee since the announcement of the team cuts.

    Even when Towriss was going though bumps in his departure at U of S, his current and former players still threw a farewell party for him. These days, Huskies football has returned to having a family feeling.

    With the cuts that have happened in the mainstream media, it is easier to make the team cuts like the U of R did compared to when the Cougars won national titles in men’s wrestling in 1997 and 1998.

A couple of items of Cougars wrestling gear.

    The brand and prestige of U Sports on a national front is less now than it was back then. At the moment, the sports news cycle is consumed with NHL playoffs, the CFL Draft, and in southern Saskatchewan, the Swift Current Broncos quest to win their first WHL title since 1993.

Still, these cuts won’t likely be quiet in Regina and area.

    As news of the team cuts at the U of R spreads, you will likely hear from more and more alums of the Cougars Wrestling teams. Like the comeback Tesar made in his gold medal match at nationals in 1998, don’t expect the Cougars alums to go away because the experiences they went through were that great.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

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Lesnar's forgotten U of Regina match

A 1998 Cougars wrestling card featuring Brock Lesnar.

    “Who is this guy?”

    That question echoed in whispers throughout the crowd at the University of Regina’s Physical Activity Centre on a cold winter night in January of 1998. University of Regina Cougars wrestler Adrian Gilmore left his team’s bench for his heavyweight match in a dual meet against the Bismarck State College Mystics and immediately stared into the eyes of an imposing opponent.

    Off the Mystics bench came this monster looking of a man, who was built like a tank.

    Gilmore stood 6-foot-1 and weighed 243 pounds and his opponent was 6-foot-3 and weighed about 270 pounds, but the sheer mass of the visiting wrestler made Gilmore, who was an all-Canadian the previous season, look small. A gasp came from the crowd as the hulking huge Mystic wrestler glared back at Gilmore with a stone-cold look. The Bismarck State College wrestler’s name was Brock Lesnar.

    That’s right – Brock Lesnar. The same Brock Lesnar who would go on to fame as a UFC heavyweight champion and a WWE star attraction.

    Back in that January day of 1998, no one would have fathomed Lesnar would become famous.

    At the time, the Cougars men’s wrestling team were the defending Canadian Interuniversity Sport champions locked on a mission to repeat. A few of the team’s members had been part of Canada’s national team system.

    The meet with the Mystics was scheduled to spark the Cougars into the second half of their season. As defending national champs, the Cougars also drew big crowds to their small home gym, who would overflow the two sets of stands that were usually set up for match nights.

    Gilmore had aspirations at the time to represent Canada at the Olympics and was also a standout defensive lineman for the Regina Rams, who were still in the Canadian Junior Football League at the time. He had helped the Rams win their 14^th CJFL title in November of 1997. The Moose Jaw, Sask., product was a finely conditioned athlete, and you could see in the eyes of the spectators they wondered what magic Gilmore could pull off to beat this beast that stood in front of him.

    Going into the heavyweight bout, the Cougars claimed the vast majority of the matches in the other weight classes and had already won the meet. Gilmore was looking to add a cap to what was already an impressive night for the host squad. Lesnar had other ideas.

    Very quickly, it was obvious to see that Lesnar was overpowering Gilmore with sheer strength. The U of R standout tried to attempt a leverage move and ended up getting stuck up in the air.

     Lesnar caught Gilmore and proceeded to power bomb him into the mat.
    The violent look of the image was shocking. Gilmore ended up being cut open on his forehead, and the officials called a timeout.

    When the match resumed, Lesnar’s power was too much to overcome and the visitor claimed victory by a pin.
     For those that saw that match, Lesnar’s victory was hard to forget.

    With the Mystics located in Bismarck, North Dakota, their visit to the U of Regina would ultimately become a footnote in the Cougars 1997-98 campaign.

    The Cougars continued to romp over the opposition at dual meets and tournaments and would repeat as CIS champs.

    Gilmore would soon bow out of competitive sports. After failing to earn an individual medal at the 1998 CIS championships, Gilmore tried his hand at sports entertainment’s version of wrestling. He performed on various independent circuits as “Crazy Horse Eddie Mustang.”

    Lesnar went on to finish the 1997-98 campaign as the national junior college heavyweight champion in the United States. He transferred over to the University of Minnesota to compete at the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s top level and won the NCAA’s national heavyweight title in 2000 to close a four-year post-secondary career with a 106-5 overall record.

    From there, Lesnar embarked on his storied forays into the WWE and UFC. In a twist that is unrelated with his 1998 match against Gilmore, Lesnar and his family have spent a large amount of time residing in Regina in recent years.

    Almost no mementos exist from Lesnar’s amateur wrestling match in Regina, and the Queen City’s CTV and Global affiliates likely no longer have footage stored away from that night.

    For those that were there to witness what happened, they were treated to one of Lesnar’s early star moments, even if they didn’t know it at the time.

Cougars champ could have rocked the UFC

Lease Bertram was U of Regina's most outstanding male athlete in 1998.

    Had the UFC rocketed to a lucrative mainstream sport about a decade sooner than it did, one member of the University of Regina Cougars men’s wrestling team could have been one of the circuit’s biggest star attractions.

    The Cougars 1997 and 1998 CIS championship teams were filled with stars, and Lease Bertram was the star that shone the brightest during both those campaigns with all due respect to heavyweight and 2000 Olympian Dean Schmeichel. Bertram won an individual CIS national championship silver medal in 1997 in the 65-kilogram class and an individual CIS national championship gold medal in 1998 in the 68-kilogram class. Bertram was a member of Canada’s national team program at one point in time and was also the U of R’s most outstanding male athlete in 1998.

    The Eston, Sask., product was one of the best athletes ever in the history of the athletics program at the U of R.

    Pound for pound, Bertram was likely the toughest athlete the U of R ever saw, but he wore that toughness in a quiet manner. When he hit the wrestling mat, Bertram was all business.

    Besides being extremely well conditioned, Bertram was gifted in the sport technically, and that gift was taken to a higher level under the guidance of Cougars head coach Leo McGee. When Bertram competed in a match, you knew you were watching something special due to the way he made it look easy, when he put three to four moves together.

    He almost always won matches by technical superiority gaining a 10-point lead often in under two minutes and frequently in under a minute. Away from mat, Bertram became part of Cougars folklore, when he helped catch a couple of punks that tried to rob the U of Regina’s Campus Recreation office in late February of 1998.

    At the height of his success, Bertram walked away from wrestling at the end of the 1997-98 campaign at age 22, when he still had two years of CIS eligibility remaining. Amateur wrestling isn’t one of the most popular or followed sports in Canada, and Bertram’s motivation to continue wasn’t there.

    When Bertram was a Cougars’ superstar, mixed martial arts was still viewed as an underground, freak-type sport, and the UFC was a fledgling body. That all changed when Dana White became president and a minority owner in the promotion in 2001.

    White was instrumental in vaulting the UFC into the mainstream and turning mixed martial arts' top professional loop into a billion-dollar business, where fighters could make millions in income.

    Traditionally, fighters with strong amateur wrestling backgrounds have excelled in the UFC. Playing the “what if” card especially with the UFC making its Saskatchewan debut on Sunday with its Fight Night 74 card set for 4 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre in Saskatoon, Bertram might have remained in wrestling, if the UFC would have been the powerhouse entity it is now back in 1998. He could have taken his skills into a very viable professional outlet.

    With his work ethic and gifted ability, I could see Bertram posting submission victory after submission victory and being a dominate force and title holder in the lightweight division. Thanks to the UFC’s platform, the masses around the world would have gotten to see just how special of an athletic talent Bertram was.  

    Unfortunately, the timing in real life wasn’t there, but for those that saw Bertram compete, it is always cool to dream of what might have been.

    If you have any comments about this blog post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.