Kai Pare is heading to Rio De Janero, Brazil for the U17 Pan-Am Wrestling Championships June 19 - 21, 2025.
The Williams Lake wrestler has been living in the Lower Mainland where she goes to school and trains with Coast Wrestling Academy team Coast RTC.
Kai qualified for the Pan-Am championships while competing at the 2025 Canadian Wrestling Championships at the end of May at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“This is the first time I made Team Canada,” she told the Tribune.
She said the competition felt like any other tournament and the practice room was filled with athletes at a high level.
“We had Olympic team members in our room so that got my nervous system to be pretty regulated to wrestling at the level.”
Pare said she wrestled four matches and in her final match was up against someone she lost to last year at the same tournament.
This time Pare won.
There are six girls on the Canadian team going to Brazil and four of them, including her, are from Coast RTC.
“I will compete in the 57 kilos U17,” she explained.
Kai leaves Friday, June 13 for a two-day camp in Toronto before the team flies to Brazil.
She wrestles on Friday, June 20, and will probably be competing in five matches.
During the week she routinely wrestles Monday to Friday and sometimes attends private sessions on Saturdays.
“I lift (weights) every morning at a school here," she added.
When asked how she focuses during matches she said she’s changed how she does that.
“At tournaments I used to really prioritize being super, super focused, but I realized I felt a lot better actually when I’m just joking around with people the whole time,” she replied. “I think when I try too hard to be too focused I get really nervous because I’m thinking about the matches a lot.”
Kai is in Grade 10 and attends Ecole Cariboo Hill Secondary School in Burnaby. She lives at the home of a teammate, which she is grateful for, she said.
In Grade 8, Kai left Williams Lake for a bit to train in the U.S. and in Grade 9 moved to the Lower Mainland to train with Coast RTC.
“I’ve got used to training year round ever since I was little,” she said. “Even when I was young we’d be driving down from Williams Lake to train with the same club sometimes.”
In July she will travel to compete in Greece at the world championships.
Kai said she owes her success to the coaches, teammates, and athletes she competes against.
"It's not as challenging to reach goals when you are surrounded by world class people all trying to get better," she said.
