During the Congress, Head of the Shymkent City Wrestling Federation Doszhan Shalkar delivered a report and presented the MKL and SWL projects aimed at developing school and student wrestling.
“Today, regional federations are facing several important issues. In Shymkent, a city with a population of more than one million people, there are only 8 wrestling halls. In addition, the transition rate of athletes from one age category to the next, especially from U17 to U20, remains low. To address these issues, we are proposing two main projects. The first is Mektep Kures Ligasy, and the second is Students Wrestling League. The main idea of MKL is that wrestling should exist not only in sports schools, but also within regular schools. In Shymkent, work in this direction has already started with 14 schools. Our goal is to give children the opportunity to compete regularly, earn ranking points and represent the honor of their school.
The SWL project, in turn, is aimed at ensuring that athletes are not lost after school. Many young athletes face the choice: sport or education. Our position is that sport and education must go hand in hand. Universities should establish their own wrestling clubs and strive to provide top athletes with grants, dormitory places and scholarships. If MKL is a system for mass sports and talent identification, then SWL is a system for retaining those talents and bringing them to a higher level,” said Doszhan Shalkar.
