MWCA honors writer Greg Kleven
By Nick Fornicoia, MWCA
March 5th, 2009
Every year the Minnesota Wrestling Coaches Association recognizes an
individual that promotes wrestling through the media. This year the
MWCA is honoring Greg Kleven from the Sun Newspapers.
Greg has written recaps and feature articles for area wrestling teams
for many years! Greg was nominated by Chuck Vavrosky from Bloomington.
Chuck said, “Greg deserves this award because of his consistent
contribution over thirty-six years. He is a very positive writer and
has truly done justice in recognizing the student athletes in our area.”
Currently, Greg’s articles appear in the Sun Newspapers in Bloomington,
Eden Prairie, and Saint Paul. He was also the Associated Press state
wrestling correspondent for over three Decades!
In his writing, Greg has inked feature stories on John, Gordy, and
Marty Morgan, The Ness brothers, and Joel Sharrat, to name a few. He
also was asked to write a special article for the State Tournament
program a few years back on Marcus LaVesseur.
Greg has covered the State tournament teams of Bloomington Jefferson
coached by Charlie Coffee, The Bloomington Kennedy teams from the
1980’s coached by Dave Arens, the 2008 Simley State Championship team
coached by Will Short, and this year’s Bloomington combined school
coached by Vavrosky.
On a personal note, I went to Richfield High School and Greg wrote many
articles about our wrestling team and about Augsburg College’s
wrestling success. Last week I leafed through my scrapbooks and noticed
how many of the articles I saved were written by Greg. He was such a
supporter of wrestling.
The Wrestling community needs more people like Greg Kleven. We need
people to constantly promote this great sport and these great athletes!
We all know that wrestlers do not wrestle for the fame and the
accolades, but it makes it that much sweeter when they do receive some
recognition.
Greg has given so much to the sport of wrestling and like the
wrestlers, he doesn’t do it for the fame and he doesn’t do it for the
accolades, but he deserves some recognition for his tremendous
contributions.
Here is a sample of Greg's work:
