Letter from the BCWA Chair

Letter from the BCWA Chair,

Thank you to everyone who participated at this year's AGM. It was our second year hosting the BCWA AGM virtually and while we are excited to see people in person soon, we expect that we will continue with online and in-person meetings to include people from around the province.

We accomplished a lot at the AGM by passing the new set of bylaws. Thank you to everyone who voted in support of the new bylaws. This is the first big step in improved governance, and we are very excited.

We also elected five board members at the AGM. Welcome Gina Carpenter, Amir Ghahreman, Rosalee MacKinnon, Ian McDonald, and Nicholas Ugoalah to the BCWA Board of Directors. They will join Raewyn Brewer, Sukhan Chahal, Tyler Keeling, and myself to complete the nine director positions.

There were four outgoing board members that I would like to give a sincere thank you to. Thank you Mike Jones, Gurjot Kooner, Aso Palani and Kate Walker. You have all given so much to wrestling over the years and I expect we will see you contributing more in the future.

This upcoming year is going to be an exciting one with wrestling making its return. We are going to make great efforts at BCWA to connect with those at the community level to try to help programs bring wrestling back. It is going to be a lot of work for everyone at all levels, but if we work together we will be successful.

Keep communicating with BCWA. We want to know what people are up to and how we can help. If people have ideas, we want to hear them. You have plans to do something, let us know and maybe we can offer support. There are many people in the wrestling community I still don't know so let's put a face/voice to the name and let's talk.

This is an exciting time and there is a great opportunity to use the last year as the inflection point for wrestling in BC. We're all rested up, so let's get out there and get things going.

As a final note, I encourage you to register for BCWA membership. If you have coached or participated for many years, please register to ensure your membership is current. Registered members have access to BCWA events and receive insurance protection. There will be some town halls and info sessions in the coming weeks so if you plan on wrestling again, please attend.

Thank you,

Chris Thom

BCWA Chair