USOEC Sweden tour report 2011

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This report is about the USOEC’s freestyle athletes’ participation in a camp and competition in Europe February 25 – March 7.

Every year during Northern Michigan University’s spring break, we travel abroad to places like Japan, Mexico, and Sweden. Erin Golston, Schuyler Brown, and Jenna Burkert trained for about 5 days with national teams from Sweden, Azerbaijan, and Japan and then competed in the Klippan Lady Open with roughly 7 other nations. All received a great education on tactics, training, and competing through the various types of styles the Asians and Europeans utilized and Jenna even brought home a bronze medal for her efforts at the competition.

Most training camps abroad, and now on our side of the world, have a training camp either on the front end or the back end of the tournament to get the most out of learning, training and competing. In our case, largely in part to NMU’s spring break, we decided to train on the front end of the tournament to maximize NMU class participation.

In years’ past, these reports have contained day-by-day updates or paragraphs of fresh ideas brought to my mind via things learned at the camp. Because Gary Abbott wrote a great story about this trip, and we actually are getting back in the middle of the night Monday, this report will be given in a slightly different format.

Top 10 things learned at Klippan Lady Open camp & competition

1. Many coaches send their junior national teams to European senior level tournaments
2. Sport schools exist in Europe and Asia in the form of special high school/university/training centers
3. There are more nations competing in women’s wrestling in South America, Asia, and Europe than 10 years ago
4. Former Soviet states like Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine have a national language and all speak Russian
5. Azerbaijan women wrestlers are from various former Soviet states i.e. Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Russia
6. Azerbaijan allocates prize money for cadet tournament medalists
7. European wrestling circuit is like the NCAA wrestling season and more international in scope
8. Europeans must qualify for European championships via a national tournament and international tournaments
9. Cuba wrestling federation has coaches on contract in many nations like Argentina, Italy, Mexico, and Honduras
10. Shoe laces coming untied in competition will result in a penalty point

Slideshow

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