Coach Chris Brownrigg was presented with the Rivers West Coach of the Year award on March 14. (Submitted photo/Chris Kent)

By Nick Nielsen

Leader in growing the sport

Meadow Lake wrestling coach named Rivers West Coach of the Year

Mar 25, 2025 | 3:38 PM

The community around the sport of wrestling in Saskatchewan is a small but committed one, and a large reason for that community’s growth is because of Meadow Lake wrestling coach Chris Brownrigg. This year, Brownrigg is the Rivers West Coach of the Year for his efforts to help grow the sport through coaching both the Carpenter High School team in Meadow Lake as well as the Northern Pikes Wrestling Club.

The Rivers West Sport, Culture, and Recreation District is one of nine in the province that covers a large area from as far northwest as Meadow Lake Park, as far northeast as Green Lake, as far southeast as Kyle, and as far southwest as Alsask, while communities such as the Battlefords, Kindersley, and Lloydminster are all included for a total of over 70 communities in the area.

Brownrigg was recognized for his efforts to grow the sport of wrestling in communities that don’t have access to the sport at the moment. The idea for a travelling wrestling program came to him when a coach he was working with, Jason Gunther, had to relocate, collapsing his Northern Pikes program from Meadow Lake and Green Lake down to just Meadow Lake once again.

From there, Brownrigg expanded his efforts to help start learn to wrestle programs in Lloydminster, La Ronge, Big River, Loon Lake, and other communities in Saskatchewan, and some have stayed as full time programs. Specifically Brownrigg is looking to continue to grow the sport in Indigenous communities.

“My goal is to try to get a wrestling program in each of the member communities of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council so that we can grow a significant Indigenous program so that we could have a lot of kids have the opportunity to go to North American Indigenous Games, which two of our kids, Skyla Russel and Gabe Regnier, won a couple of games ago.”

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Brownrigg won gold in the Veteran D age group in the 130kg weightclass for Greco-Roman wrestling during the 2023 US National Open. (Submitted photo/Chris Kent)

Not only has Brownrigg been promoting the sport of wrestling as a coach, but even at nearly 60 years old he’s also being an advocate as an athlete. In 2023, Brownrigg competed in the US National Open in Las Vegas where he won bronze in the Veterans D age group at 130 kg in freestyle wrestling, and won gold in that same weightclass in more throw heavy Greco-Roman division. He also won the first Sask. Master Veterans Open in 2024.

Since then, veterans and masters wrestling events have started to show up in Saskatchewan again. According to Chris Kent, a board member for Saskatchewan Amateur Wrestling Association and the Rivers West Coach of the year for 2023, Brownrigg is singlehandedly responsible for revitalizing veteran and masters wrestling in the province.

“Where were you when you heard Chris Browrigg was going to be competing at the US open? We all talked about it, and honestly, some of us didn’t have the most positive outlook. Now where were you when you heard he won it? Rob Lang and I were talking on the phone as soon as the results came in. That’s it. Chris is braver than me. Definitely crazier, but also braver. It took guts to do what he did and the master wrestlers (which he helped reignite) are testimonials to that,” said Kent as part of his speech to present Brownrigg with the award.

As a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces reserves and the RCMP Auxillary Service, Brownrigg has always had wrestling be a part of his life. During his final year of high school, the year where Brownrigg didn’t get that chance to finish his final year as a wrestler because of an accident with a drunk driver.

While the physical skillset he learned through wrestling served him well in the military and RCMP, the resiliency he learned through the sport as a kid and now again as an adult is why Brownrigg feels the need to spread this sport to as many different places as he can.

“I just want to give that to other kids. The big thing I love about the sport is that it’s a sport for everybody. Quite often we have the oddball athletes as it were, the big ones, the little ones, the ones that wouldn’t fit on your traditional basketball or hockey team or whatever, just because they’re not kind of cut out of a certain certain form. Wrestling, you can be a champion whether you’re 44 kg or 130 kg, and everything in between. It depends on your work ethic and your own internal passion and how hard you push yourself to improve, and being able to see that and try to foster that in kids is a real privilege.”

Brownrigg is excited for Meadow Lake to host the Saskatchewan Winter Games in February 2026 where wrestling will be on display. The sport continues to grow in the province, reaching back up to the same levels they were at before the pandemic hit, and Brownrigg with the rest of the Saskatchewan wrestling community hopes to see it continue to grow.