Wrestling Federation finds new home at Ada Gym

There’s a new space for people to roll, grapple, and get into a new sport or develop their wrestling skills as NMI Wrestling Federation is settling into its new home in one of the rooms at the Gilbert C. Ada Gymnasium.

They’ve been utilizing the space for about two or three weeks now after Belau Wrestling Federation donated a full sized mat to the federation. For now, they have informal practices with some of the wrestlers from the national team that competed in the Mini Games, as well as some interested in just rolling around and getting to know the sport.

Rick Bauer, vice president of the federation and head coach of the national team said that getting to where they are was a slow build up of work with the federation president Jason Tarkong over the last five or six years. “Getting this mat donated to us and the [Northern Marianas Sports Association] and the board voting to allow us to utilize this space and it’s kind of coming together quickly and beautifully so it’s really exciting,” he said. “We got this full sized mat and this room is a little smaller than it could be because you could see the extra mats on the sides here so it’s a bigger mat than even the room, so it’s exciting stuff.”

The federation is set to have an open house on Saturday, Dec. 6 between 3-6pm with formal practice schedules forthcoming. “We’ll invite probably the 12 and under age groups and the 13 plus age groups and just talk about the mission statement, the vision, the intention, announce a formal practice schedule, hand out some paperwork with liability forms, and things like that. Really just generate the interest and get an idea of who, what, where, when moving forward. So, we got big plans as far as the federation goes.”

To add to the momentum, Bauer recently received his United World Wrestling Level II Coaching Certification during the UWW Oceania Regional Educational Development Program held last month in Sydney, Australia. “Great week of connections and strengthening relationships within UWW and it was good to be able to bring some of that back and establish relationships to hopefully bring one of those to Saipan. It’s kind of what we’re hoping to do here in the coming year to bring a regional development program to continue to grow and invite the region for that development program.”

Looking forward, some wrestlers are gearing up for some off island competitions. Miles Borja and Lincoln Manibusan are competing in Taiwan for the Traditional Taiwanese Belt Wrestling next month. The federation is also preparing for the 2027 Tahiti Pacific Games and the Nauru Micronesian Games in 2028, and possibly the Oceania Championships in 2026. “We’ve got things on the horizon and of course other opportunities. There’s always Southeast Asia and Thailand tournaments so there’s options that once we get going and get to where we want to be to go off island. I know Guam has interscholastic wrestling as well so even more inter-island competitions as well.”

Bauer also hopes to get wrestling in the schools here with interscholastic competitions. He said, “there’s definitely interest. I’ve had those conversations with people that I need to in regards to if it’s possible and it sounds like there’s definitive interest within the students… that is again part of the bigger picture for the federation is one day if we can have a mat in every school to have interscholastic wrestling—it would be phenomenal. That’s the big vision—bring wrestling to the island and make it part of the culture here.”

With these developments, the NMI Wrestling Federation continues its push to grow and strengthen the sport in the islands.