The USOEC freestyle wrestling team, 8 athletes and 1 coach plus Lock Haven University coach Terry Fike, participated in a training camp in Götzis, Austria December 10-20, 2010. This year, the camp included 52 wrestlers from 7 nations: Sweden, China, Germany, Austria, Norway, Italy, and USA. 

As in years past, most of the trip is captured digitally and this year you can 're-live' the experience via photo galleries, music videos, technique demonstrations, and practice matches at http://youtube.com/coachshannyn and at  http://facebook.com/coachshannyn

Each year, I try different ways to convey the importance of traveling abroad for training, education, and communication and to disseminate what I learned from traveling. This is done mainly to inspire others to do similar things and build on the model that many Olympic sports use to strive towards excellence, perfection, and or to maximum potential. Some say brevity is clarity and below is an attempt to be concise, clear, and 'edutaining'.

International training camps offer a lot of unique learning experiences like different training partners, different cultures, different languages, and different styles of wrestling. It dawned on me this year that most countries simply do not have a lot of women wrestlers (nor training partners) and camps are used to bring international masses together so everyone can grow, learn, and develop. The idea that countries are pooling their resources to maximize potential is one that can be used in many different areas and is if we take a closer look e.g. Olympic Games, Pan Am Games, World University Games. To me, training and competition can be used to maximize potential with the right mindset... and, everyone can learn, grow, and develop no matter what their location if they choose to. During these camps, the athletes learn from each other, the coaches, and probably learn a lot about themselves if they choose to.

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