Rising Sports Stars with Kelly Exelby of Eves Realty

The 21 kilograms Marshall Gibson has shed since he started wrestling a few years ago is more than compensated by his monster haul of 11 gold medals at national and international competitions this year.

Tauranga wrestler Marshall Gibson has been turning heads in the wrestling-mad US.

Marshall, part of Bay of Plenty Polytechnic's high performance sports academy where he's a year into his electrical engineering studies, grabbed four out of a possible six golds at the national wrestling and grappling championships in Hamilton, with silver and bronze in the two divisions he didn't win.

But it's his performance in the United States, where he toured with the New Zealand junior team, that turned heads. Here Marshall backed up silver in the Yorktown freestyle tournament, which attracted 500 top state wrestlers, with gold and two silvers in the Jeffersonville Iron Man tournament.

The 19-year-old, who got his start in wrestling when he used it as a training aid in the rugby off-season at Tauranga Boys' College, rates his effort in the States, where wrestling is a big deal, as his best result of a breakthrough year. He was also a finalist in Bay of Plenty junior sportsman of the year and recent recipient of a BayTrust sports scholarship.

'It's been a pretty good year all in all, but that meet in Jeffersonville was the big highlight. They eat, sleep and breathe wrestling in the US but I just felt in the groove that weekend and kept winning.”

Marshall took out national titles in the junior 120kg freestyle and Greco-Roman and senior 120kg and 120kg+ Greco – where one of his opponents weighed in at 137kg – with silver and bronze in junior grappling and senior freestyle.

His total count for 2012 tops a staggering 20 medals and now Marshall is targeting March's Oceania championships in Guam, where he'll arrive a lot leaner and meaner than when he first took up the sport as a 17-year-old.

He tipped the scales at 124kg back then but the 1.93m-tall grappler shed a remarkable 21kg through a combination of good nutrition and hard graft, working with coach Mark Grayling at their Mount Maunganui club. He cut to 103kg but is slowly managing his weight back up with the aim of wrestling in Guam at 113kg.

'I'm eating right and doing lots of exercise. I've always been a big boy but I feel a lot more agile and supple and should be better for it on the mat at 113 or 114kg.”

Guam will be Marshall's last Oceania competition as a junior, although he'll jump up a grade into the senior weight divisions as well. Two golds in the junior ranks in freestyle and Greco is his goal, with the junior world championships in Bulgaria next year also on the horizon. He needs to top the dais in Guam to qualify.

The 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow is the big prize, but that will be reliant on a decent showing in Bulgaria and at the Commonwealth Championships, also in Scotland.

Marshall trains every afternoon during the week, doing a mixture of weights, cardio and wrestling at his local club, spending 12 hours a week in the gym.

'Wrestling is different to any other sports and you need a special kind of fitness which I only get from actually doing wrestling,” Marshall adds.

Kelly Exelby is a residential marketing specialist with Eves Realty Ltd. Phone 07 571 7751, mobile 0275 501 851, email kelly.exelby@eves.co.nz