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WSF proudly presents.... |
Dear friends of the World Sports Festivals!
A long winter season finally started and we will definitely prepare in the best possible way for the upcoming year. It is not always easy to motivate yourself for a sometimes exhausting and hard training. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to set attractive targets that are worth fighting for and accepting these struggles. Especially with young athletes it is essential to offer concrete perspectives they can work towards.
The volleyball tournament at the WSF is in the very lucky position to offer such a motivator: one of the best wrestling clubs from Germany has confirmed his participation for 2012!
The SC Oberölsbach counts 1,500 members and is amongst the biggest sports- and wrestling clubs of Southern Germany. Besides wrestling, the club also offers other disciplines such as soccer, tennis, weight lifting and gymnastics.
During the current season the adults’ team shows an impeccable statistics of achieved winnings and maintains sovereign on top of the table. Next year they will even fight in the German first league.
The young athletes of the club are, amongst others, coached by Mr. Christian Fröhlich . The excellent youth work of the past years was rewarded with the German youth championship title of his son Alexander in 2011.
Interview mit Christian Fröhlich
1. Your son is Bavarian youth champion. What is a typical day in his life like?
In Germany wrestling develops quite unequally, as many clubs have severe problems to find new blood athletes. A reason for those problems might be simply the fact that clubs do not keep up with the times. Nowadays it is more likely to start wrestling, because you know somebody who already practices it. An important factor in working with young talents is to offer perspectives to them. In order to find new talents, we visit schools and kindergartens – we try to be on the spot to give information at first hand. But we are in a lucky position, as the success of our first team – which is heading the table – and the resulting positive news in media/newspapers bring interested young athletes to our club. Our first objective here in Oberölsbach is to make our boys successful! However, we are also offering other experiences like the WSF or the visit of an American youth team in 2012. We are planning to go on trainings camps to France probably in 2013 and a exchange visit to the USA. We are also organizing a tent camp every year and this year we even invited one of our neighboring clubs. This year during the camp we introduced the boys into oil wrestling (Turkish national sports). Those are events which our youngsters will keep in mind for quite a long time. In turn our boys are the best testimonials to recruit new talents, as they will tell about the great activities of the club and their own experiences. Also our participation at the World Sports Festival is a good promotion to find young athletes. Conclusion: Our club shows a very positive development, however for Germany as a whole, this is not the case.
2. In your opinion, what is the right age to start wrestling in order to later succeed in international tournaments?
Alex just started his apprenticeship at the beginning of September. He gets up at 5.30 am and returns back home from work at 5 pm. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he takes part at the club training which lasts from 7.30 pm to 9.30 pm. On Wednesdays and Fridays he trains the very little ones on the mat from 6 pm to 7.30 pm. On Thursdays he is at the federal training center in Nuremberg from 7 pm to 9.30 pm. Going to Nuremberg takes about 40 minutes by car. On Saturdays there are usually team competitions, as our club also wrestles in the Bavarian League. As you can see, there is not much time left! We strongly hope that we will win the championship 2011 and consequently move into the third highest league.There is also a top-ten list of wrestlers and three of our athletes lead this list.
3. In your opinion, what is the right age to start wrestling in order to later succeed in international tournaments?
The best is to start early – our smallest are between 4 and 5 years old. However, you can also start later – Alexander for example just started wrestling when he was ten and since three years now he is one of the best German wrestlers in his age category.
4. At the WSF 2011 competition from eastern countries was quite strong. Which nations would you say are the most important centers for wrestling?
I would definitely say that the former Eastern bloc countries, Sweden and Turkey are very strong nations in the field of wrestling.
5. What motivates a juvenile to start wrestling?
One very natural motivator is simply the trial of strengths – which is fun for every kid. Further there is a very strong team spirit within the whole wrestling family compared to other sports. Of course adventures or excursions like for example to the WSF are fantastic motivators too. Our boys are still crazy about the WSF and tell everyone about it!
