Those categorised athletes that accepted the invitation to attend an extended training camp taking place in South-East Queensland will now begin to return to their home base as we approach the year’s end. It has been an excellent opportunity for the athletes to work on a daily basis with the National Head Coach together with those Queensland based athletes that have already secured a place at the 2020 Olympic Games. The local Gold Coast boxing community has also benefitted from having those athletes integrate into their environment and have been able to take advantage of the regular sparring opportunities on offer. The first of three Boxing Queensland development days took place at Ashmore PCYC and the massive turnout demonstrated the desire and great appetite for this exciting new initiative. Athletes of all ages and abilities assimilated technical and tactical instructions delivered over three sessions expertly constructed by the National Coach and the High Performance athletes and spread throughout the day. The feedback received was very complimentary and a great day was had by everyone involved.

Two further Boxing Queensland development days took place at Lindgren’s Gym in Townsville, North Queensland, that were equally well attended by the athletes and coaches from as far afield as Mount Isa and Middlemount. The coaches took advantage of the fact that so many athletes were in attendance by arranging sparring sessions to finish off what had been a fantastic day on both occasions.

This excellent initiative is set to continue over in West Australia where Boxing WA has already requested a development day take place, again to be delivered by the National Head Coach and a group of the High Performance athletes, at the West Australia Institute of Sport on 12th December. It is hoped that it will be at least as successful as the pilot days that have been delivered in Queensland and will become a regular feature of the new Combat Institute HP boxing programme.

During November, the National Futures Program had one camp in each of NSW, WA and VIC.

Boxing Australia was excited to see the Victorian Futures squad athletes get back together after lockdown.

The Futures Facebook page continues to stay active providing information and boxing drills.

The forthcoming state camps are:

• NSW
• SA
• ACT
• VIC

Great to announce the appointment of Alex Vallentine as inaugural CEO of CombatAUS.

Over the past year, BAL along with Judo Australia, Australian Taekwondo and the AIS have created the new entity Combat Institute of Australia.

Focused purely on High Performance, CombatAUS will develop athletes for the World Championships, Commonwealth Games and Olympics.

Unfortunately due to the outbreak occurring in Adelaide and subsequent SA border closures by other States, Boxing Australia had to make the difficult decision to postpone the Club Championships.

A decision on new dates for the event won't be taken until there is more certainty regarding the safe participation for all involved.

The Boxing Australia office will be closed from Friday 25 December and reopen Wednesday 2 January 2021.

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