#development

Austria hosts U14/U15 women's wrestling camp

By United World Wrestling Press

WALS-SIEZENHEIM, Austria (October 16) --- The UWW High Performance Training Center and the Austrian National Wrestling Center in the sports community of Wals-Siezenheim hosted an U14/U15 girls wrestling camp of the Austrian Wrestling Federation, where 14 young women's wrestlers and 6 coaches took part in the camp.

The camp was led by the women's junior national coach Arsen FEITL. In addition to seven hard and varied training sessions, there were also several alternative activities on the programme. Parallel to the training camp, an international freestyle training camp of the seniors took place at the Austrian National Wrestling center, which the young athletes followed with great interest and which presented them with wrestling at the highest international level during the training competitions.

GEROlympic champion Aline ROTTER-FOCKEN (GER) was in attendance for the U14/U15 women's wrestling camp in Austria (Photo: United World Wrestling)

In the camp of the UWW-Europe women's project, the German Olympic champion Aline ROTTER-FOCKEN was a guest as a role model for the young athletes. The enthusiasm of the girls was very high from the beginning and Aline made a lot of effort and communicated with everyone.

In addition to the training sessions with the young athletes, Aline did a workshop with the girls where she talked about her life, her career and her Olympic victory. Afterwards, the girls got autographs from her and had the opportunity to admire her Olympic gold medal and take photos with her. The young athletes were thrilled and overwhelmed. For the Austrian Wrestling Federation, it was the first one-week training camp in the age group of U14/U15 for girls and for next year, several more training camps in the age group U14/U15 are planned.

In summary, it was a very successful camp and the participation of Aline Rotter-Focken was very good and it was a great thing for all involved People. The project has been an absolute success and the Austrian National Federation hopes that the UWW Europe will also benefit from the project.

Development

New Referee and Rules Courses coming to the UWW Academy

By United World Wrestling Press

CORSIER-VEVEY, Switzerland (December 9) --- The Development Department and Referee Commission will launch a series of courses centered around Olympic wrestling and refereeing rules. Evaluating holds and situations are not always easy and can be very complex.  These courses are designed to highlight specific and more complicated rules in hopes of providing a better understanding of how situations are being evaluated. Over the next year, will be 10 courses developed and published on the UWW Academy site.

“We are excited to announce new courses on the UWW Academy Platform, designed to elevate refereeing standards and promote excellence across all levels. These courses cover essential topics such as attack-counterattack actions, evaluation of holds, takedown and control, and out-of-bounds situations," said Antonio Silvestri. "As Head of the Refereeing Commission, I encourage all referees—experienced or starting out—to take advantage of these courses. Continuous learning is key to our success, and these courses will help us maintain the highest standards of integrity, fairness, and professionalism in every match. Let's keep raising the bar together." 

The first course on Attack vs Counterattack situations has been published on the Academy site. Attack vs Counterattack situations are referees' most complicated and challenging situations to evaluate. This course will try to highlight how these situations are evaluated and what questions referees must answer during an action. While this course and the others are centered around referees, they are available and encouraged to be completed by all wrestling stakeholders.

The Attack vs Counterattack course will begin with background information and the rules which include video examples.  Then the course will provide 10 specific video examples along with explanations. Next the participants will practice their video analysis with 10 videos.  The course will finish with a 15-video quiz. All the courses that will be published will follow a similar format.

The UWW Academy is the official educational platform for United World Wrestling. It offers numerous courses on coaching, referees, rules, sports administration, and beach wrestling. The academy also offers additional resources, performance analysis metrics from major UWW events, videos, and the Wrestle4Fun curriculum. It is free and available to all participants. To get started and create your free profile, please visit  https://academy.uww.org/.