Nolan Terrance Receives Most Valuable Wrestler

Nolan Terrance received the Most Valuable Wrestler award for Massena Central last Tuesday night at the Massena Peewee Wrestling banquet. Nolan couldn't make his own banquet because he was wrestling at the Cadet Juvenile Canadian National Wrestling Championships.

Scott Perrine and Frank Perry coach wrestling for Massena Central and said it's the first time in 20 years two wrestlers received the award. The team has an excellent senior wrestler who was a definite for the award; but they said, they had to recognize Nolan's talent and the only thing left to do was to give two awards.

"I've been Nolan's coach since the beginning. A few years ago he hurt my shoulder and I haven't really wrestled him since," Perrine joked.

Nolan and his family have been travelling across two countries to wrestle. Besides Massena Central, Nolan trains at two different clubs in Montreal, in Kahnawake at the Survival School, at the Akwesasne Boys & Girls Club with the Barreiro twins and in Peru. He has about 7 coaches, some are Olympic athletes.

Nolan has only been wrestling for 4 years and last year was his first offseason.

He's been all over to very prestigious tournaments. He wrestled in the Fargo Nationals, "The largest US high school wrestling tournament in the nation," said Perry.

Perrine and Perry think Nolan has a definite shot at becoming a State Champion. It would be the first wrestling state champion that Massena ever produced.

Perrine said, "I will do everything to make sure that he gets good seeding." Nolan needs to get to good tournaments to get quality wins. But, Nolan's mom Alexandra said, it's so hard to find opponents that are big enough to wrestle Nolan at 285 lb.

"Tournaments are so important, there's only one way to get better, by wrestling. You can't practice wrestling," said Perry. He continued, "I love coaching Nolan because he doesn't just go through the motions. When I tell him to work on or fix something I see it in the next match."

His coaches say none of it would be possible without the support he gets from his family.

Nolan took silver in the Canada Games, and he won gold in Greco-Roman and silver in Freestyle at the Nationals. Nolan's family have been on the road and will continue to go to tournaments all over, from Fargo, to New York City to the Indigenous Games in Regina. Alexandra said, "We're lucky that he has such great coaches and that we've met great people in the offseason."