2011 has been a great season for Wrestling New Zealand. It has been a season marked by the working together in harmony of clubs around the country, unhindered by personal agendas, with everyone striving for the betterment of all.

It has also been a busy season. There have been over 20 wrestling tournaments under the WNZ banner, 5 events for grapplers  and even one Greco-Roman only tournament. The tournaments have been supplemented by 3 training camps and 2 highly successful Wrestling for Grapplers clinics.

Providing competition and opportunities for further development and experience are essential elements of any responsible organisation, and WNZ has not been idle here either.  Our talented athletes were given numerous opportunities to travel and compete during 2011. We sent teams to the Oceania Championships in Samoa, the DownUnder tournament on the Gold Coast, the Junior World Championships in Romania, the Commonwealth Championships in Melbourne and the Australia Cup International Tournament, also in Melbourne.  In addition, the Australia Cup was preceded by an international training camp with world-class clinicians.

Many of our athletes were also able to benefit from the tour to New Zealand of the Indiana Cultural Exchange Team. This excellent group of young men took part in club trainings, dual meets and one tournament.

The latter part of 2011 has seen the foundations laid for an equally busy season in 2012. Not only is a Wrestling team in training for the Oceania Championships in Sydney late January, but our first ever New Zealand FILA Grappling team will be taking part in the same event.

There are also plans underway for more teams to tour overseas. A New Zealand Cultural Exchange team is going to Indiana and Oregon in April, and the DownUnder team will again tour to the Gold Coast in July.

Arriving on our shores in late July will be a Cultural Exchange team from Southern California for a series of combined trainings, dual meets and tournaments. It is also very likely that we will benefit from a visit by a Wyoming Cultural Exchange team in June.

In 2012 we intend to build on our links with the country’s grappling fraternity to our mutual benefit. We will expand our Wrestling for Grapplers clinics to areas outside of the Auckland and Wellington regions (3 have already been planned for Wellington), and have established an exciting new partnership with New Zealand Grappler ( http://nzgrappler.co.nz ). New Zealand Grappler ran the largest Grappling event in the country in 2011, with their No-Gi Nationals drawing 232 entries. The working together with NZ Grappler should provide increased opportunities for both grapplers and wrestlers.

2012 is looking like another busy and fruitful year and we are looking forward to it.

A second successful training camp for wrestlers attending the Oceania Champs in Sydney in January was held at Rosehill on 18th December 2011 .

Team coaches Mark Grayling, Darcy Dunlop and Ross Tanner were joined by guest clinicians Andrei Paulet (NZ rep) and Amir Bahrami (former Iranian National Junior Champ).  The coaching staff were very pleased with the  attitude and commitment of all athletes who attended the camp.

The third and final camp will be held in the week before departure

The NZ Grappling Team for the Sydney Oceania Wrestling and Grappling Championships 27-29 January 2012 has been selected. The team was selected from the best aggregated results from the Nationals, North Island Championships, 03-The Trials, and where a division was not fully competitive, 01-Roll for Christchurch.

We appreciate that not all of NZ’s Grapplers attended these events but I’m sure that most will agree that this is the start of fantastic opportunities for our sport and that most of you won’t miss out on the opportunity to qualify next year! The team will members will be having to cover the travel costs themselves, but if you wish to make a donation or become a sponsor please deposit into Combat Sports Central: 03 1521 0216629 000 with “NZ Team”. If I could ask that you  forward this donation request others in the grappling community to help your team as much as possible. Allocation of the funds will be decided by the entire team at a formal training session.