The Junior & Cadet Sweden tour was an amazing camp & tournament experience for our Greco wrestlers.
The camp was broken into two practices a day and separated into Cadet/Junior level. The cadets had the best of both because in the Junior Practice they wrestled more and in the Cadet practice they learned various techniques from all the great European coaches there. This beat any training camp a high school age athlete will ever find in the US. The young athlete’s not only got great training but they also got to see that wrestling is bigger worldwide than they could ever of imagined.
The camp was coached well and was organized in order to get the wrestlers ready for the weekend tournament. The Swedish coaches used all their resources to provide the best coaching and wrestlers for this camp. The US wrestlers participated in every camp practice. I felt our athletes really learned a lot and got the opportunity to experience this new culture. We stressed throughout the camp to every wrestler that the training camp was as important as competing over the weekend.
The wrestlers stayed with host families and ate most of their meals with the hosts or at the Best Western motel. The coaches were put up at Best Western where our Swedish hosts provided meals. The food was Fantastic! The day of weigh-ins, we departed Klippen to Vasteras where the tournament was hosted and went by a commercial bus. The trip was around 6 hours drive and we had about 1.5 hours to make weight for the tournament when we arrived in Vasteras.
Its great to see that the tournament was double elimination so everyone was guaranteed at least 2 matches. They used cross bracketing to guarantee the athletes that were winning would get more opportunities to compete. Everyone of the American athletes got at least 3 matches in the tournament, which means everyone won an international match.
What made the trip great was the Swedish coaches, wrestlers and families enjoying having us part of their training and competition experience. We are grateful for our Swedish hosts, taking care of food, travel and all the incidentals. After the competition we headed back to Klippen after we all showered to catch the train to Copenhagen for our flight home.
USA Greco-Roman will continue supporting this tour because not only is it cost effective, and the wrestling experiences both in the camp and tournament was priceless, but also to continue the growth of Greco-Roman wrestling in the US.
Coach Lucas Steldt did a great job both getting updates and results back to the US. Coach Lucas was great coaching in the corner and helping at the camp. Thank you Coach @combatwc1
* Coaches we need you
We need to keep taking young coaches on these tours for the experience and developing future Greco coaches.
* We can also use a international Cadet/Junior Greco age group tournaments in the US.
This way all Cadets have the opportunity to participate and get the experience they need to make the decision to wrestle Greco full time as their choice of style.
The superior Camp is the next opportunity to get international training and competition without traveling the world.
If you want to take the next step in you’re wrestling career and get to an international training camp and tournament, the Austria tour is an incredible experience. I was able to attend this tournament last year and it was an incredible experience.
Austria Junior Open
Gotzis, Austria Feb.23-March 5th 2016
- February 26th weigh in/27th tournament
- February 29th – March 4th training camp
- Eligible wrestlers born between 1996-99
- Countries enter: FRA/ITA/CZE/FIN/DEN/SUI/USA
COST OF TRIP:
- Airfare from Chicago $1000.00
- R/B ($45.00 per night) X 10= $450.00
- Fila License: $50.00
- Bus round trip from Zurich airport= $50.00
- Entry fee= $50.00
TOTAL COST = $1570.00
For more information about this tour contact: Coach Rob Hermann rhermann@nmu.edu