Chemainus Secondary School’s Hannah Tuplin of Crofton is one of the prize recruits of the University of the Fraser Valley’s wrestling program.
Coming off the most successful season in program history, the University of the Fraser Valley wrestling teams reloaded for the 2018-19 campaign with Cascades head coach Raj Virdi signing nine other athletes – eight male and one other female besides Tuplin – to bolster a program that claimed four individual medals at the U SPORTS national championships and collected many major awards at the Canada West conference and U SPORTS levels in 2017-18.
“We wanted to bring more numbers onto campus, and this is one of the best recruiting classes we’ve had so far,” Virdi said. “This young group will do well next year. It’s a good, tough group coming in, and several of them have been on national teams, which is great experience.”
Tuplin, a women’s division powerhouse, earned the right to represent Canada after winning gold at cadet nationals in 2016, traveling to Peru for the Pan American Championships where she earned a bronze medal.
Overall, she’s racked up four podium finishes at the national age-class championships (including gold in 2015 and 2016), and a trio of medals at the B.C. high school championships, highlighted by gold in 2018. She plans to pursue a General Studies degree at UFV.
“I’ve been scouting Hannah for the past couple years, and I’ve seen her development really take off,” Virdi noted. “She’s good at transitioning between offence and defence. We knew she liked the outdoors, so we wanted to get her onto campus and see that this would be a good option for her. She’ll have a big impact for us right away.”
“I grew up in a small community, so I don’t think I would do as well at a university with 30,000 people,” said Tuplin of her decision to sign with the Cascades. “With the small class sizes, you can still make connections with the professors. It seems like a tight community.
“I think it’s a really good wrestling program here, because it’s a young program but it’s already doing so well.”