Guildford Park, Semiahmoo Secondary girls tie to win 2025 BCSS wrestling provincials
Semiahmoo Secondary sisters Gurleen and Tania Dhillon placed first in their categories of the BCSS Provincial Wrestling Championship, tying with Guildford Park Secondary's Natalie Wojchiechowski and Khushi Jhalli to bring banners back to both schools. (Image via Semiahmoo Athletics)
In this year’s wrestling provincials, Semiahmoo sisters Gurleen and Tania Dhillon and Guildford Park students Natalie Wojciechowski and Khushi Jhalli placed first in the female 51 kg, 54 kg, 64 kg and 69 kg categories, respectively, earning each team 32 points and putting them both at the top of the leaderboard.
“I don’t know if they realize how significant it is to win a banner as two athletes from two schools,” said Guildford Park wrestling coach Gina Carpenter. “Some schools come and have 10-plus girls in the tournament. They’re all so humble and it’s quite a feat they accomplished, it’s pretty exciting.”
All four girls were seeded highly heading into provincials: the Grade 10 Khushi was first in her category, with Grade 11 students Natalie and Tania second in theirs, followed by Gurleen in third.
The Guildford Park girls each brought years of experience to the mat, having trained with their dads since they were each in Grade 8. Carpenter said Natalie and Khushi wrestled the tournament one match at a time, which served to be a better mentality that took the pressure off the expectations of being seeded so high.
“In the final, Natalie was 2-0 and had 40 seconds left, which for some doesn’t seem like a lot of time, but in a wrestling match, it’s a lot of time,” said Carpenter. “She ended up scoring another two in the last 10 seconds.
“Khushi took maybe a couple of minutes and then she started to figure out what was going to work for her. She had injured her shoulder a few days before the tournament and so she couldn’t do a lot of typical moves, but she was able to adapt based on what she was able to do.”
Meanwhile, the Dhillon sisters each came to the provincials with the same goal but different histories: Tania sought to repeat her first-place finish from the previous year while Gurleen aimed to outdo her third place standing from 2024 – an impressive feat as a then-Grade 8 student wrestling competitors from Grades 8 to 12.
At last year’s women’s nationals, the sisters each placed first in the U15 and U17 freestyle and Greco categories for their weight classes, making them favourites to win at this year’s provincials.
“Those two sisters are amazing,” said Carpenter. “They’ve been really great wrestlers for a long time and it’s really awesome to see all of our girls succeed.”
The Guildford Park win marks the school’s first provincial girls wrestling banner, and Carpenter – who wrestled for the school back in the day – couldn’t be more proud.
“Knowing their effort, they’re two people the community really likes, and the fact they’re the ones to win the first banner is even better,” she said.
Congratulations Natalie, Khushi, Tania and Gurleen on being this year’s BCSS Girls Wrestling Provincial Champions!
Major thanks to the Canadian Mal Wrestling Club and Coast Wrestling Academy for their support of our student athletes!
