2025 Season’s Greeting from the WGI President
Dear members, dear affiliates and dear friends of the WGI,
on November 19, 2025, we held WGI’s Annual General Assembly in the beautiful Luisensaal of Hotel Kaiserhof in Münster. The regular elections resulted in a number of changes to the executive board. Helga Leineweber, head of the “Education and Culture in Sport” department at the IfS, was elected as the new head of WGI’s Olympic Sport department. Michael Krüger will now collaborate as a project partner in this field and will continue to closely follow Olympic developments with his expertise. Eric Eils was re-elected as head of Sport Performance. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a candidate to replace Dennis Dreiskämper, the outgoing head of Health Enhanced Physical Activities. However, he will continue to support us with advice and assistance through his ongoing cooperation projects in this area. We are hopeful that we will be able to fill this position again by the next General Assembly in 2026. The two vice presidents, Nils Neuber (Children and Youth Sport) and Martin Gesigora (Finance), will remain in office for another two years following their election two years ago. With this team on the Executive Board, I was happy to stand for re-election as president and would like to thank the members for their trust in me.
In the Children and Youth Sport Department, the Democracy Festival on July 4-5, 2025, was a special event format that attracted a great deal of attention in politics and had a considerable broad impact. Students from all over Germany took part and engaged in intensive discussions with representatives from schools, administration, civil society, state and federal politics, and organized sports (https://www.wgi.de/de/aktuelles/demokratiefestival-der-uni-muenster-ein-voller-erfolg/). The topic of all-day schools was present in various projects throughout the year. Work on a quality framework for exercise, play, and sport in all-day schools on behalf of the dsj was completed in close cooperation with Miriam Kehne (University of Paderborn) and Jessica Süßenbach (University of Lüneburg), and training courses were held. Last but not least, three project proposals were submitted in this field of research—hopefully with a positive outcome.
The Olympic Sport Department focused on a wide range of activities within an international context and international scientific contacts. One highlight was the Olympic Study Day on June 26, 2025, which attracted considerable international attention, featuring a lecture entitled “The Asian Perspective on the Olympics” by Prof. Niehaus (Ghent) and a report by Yoonkyu Song on plans for an Indian Olympic bid at the 1st International Olympic Research Conference in the Indian state of Gujarat. Furthermore, our Vice President for Olympic Sport, Michael Krüger, together with Yoonkyu Song, took part in the German-Korean conference on “Olympics, Democracy and Peace” in Seoul at the end of October, organized by the Institute of Sport Science at Seoul National University (SNU). Both gave lectures and seminar contributions there.
The Sport Performance department also had a very international focus. As part of the EU-funded HORIZON project TBrainBoost, department head Eric Eils and Sebastian Brückner organized a two-day workshop on “Sports science – (Research and Knowledge-) Transfer under the umbrella of diversity” during the dvs Hochschultag from September 17-19, 2025, in Münster. Other key areas of work in this department included the projects Physical Activity in Snow Sports for Brain Tumor Patients and Their Families (a study in collaboration with the UKM, Neurosurgery) and work to improve talent development in girls’ soccer.
Our outgoing department head for Health Enhanced Physical Activities, Dennis Dreiskämper, continues to work closely with Maike Tietjens and Lena Henning on empirical surveys on motor and psychosocial diagnostics of primary school children in Altenberge. The funding amount for 2025 was €20,000, and in addition to motor and psychosocial diagnostics, primary schools are also being supported in developing an all-day school sport concept. Under the acronym “BEAT,” a very timely intervention project for children diagnosed with obesity has also been launched in cooperation with Lena Henning. It will run for one year and has a total budget of approximately €32,000 (partners: Euregio Clinic, KSB Grafschaft Bentheim).
The WGI 2025 was also very active in other projects: Several transfer activities were carried out as part of the Erasmus+ project “EduPASS: Education for Physical Activity and Sport: Informal and Non-Formal Settings.” Roland Naul and Sebastian Brückner represented WGI at an invited symposium at the CIAPSE Congress in Zurich. Marie Ghanbari and her “Sportpaten” have long been an indispensable beacon project for promoting participation and social learning in Münster. In addition to further international lectures on the sustainable acquisition of multipliers for the project idea, Marie Ghanbari was recently recognized with the 2025 Teaching Award by the University of Münster –acknowledging her innovative achievements in teaching, which comes with a prize of €30,000.
The outlined selection of diverse national and international activities shows that, in 2025, the WGI continued to be a competent and sought-after project and cooperation partner thanks to its scientific expertise and knowledge transfer into practice, as documented by numerous publications from the departments. The volume “Olympia und Olympismus” (Olympics and Olympism), edited by Michael Krüger and Helga Leineweber, which contains the lectures from an international lecture series from the summer semester of 2024 and will be published in spring 2026 as volume 18 of the WGI series, proves this once again.
Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a major international conference next year. The program planning for the CEREPS Summit “Children and Youth Sport in Schools and Sport Clubs” from June 29 to July 1, 2026, at the Franz-Hitze-Haus has now been completed (https://www.wgi.de/de/projekte-in-der-praxis/cereps-summit-2026/). All WGI members are cordially invited and can register online starting in January 2026.
On behalf of the entire Executive and Management Board, I wish you and your families a wonderful Christmas season and a happy, successful, healthy, and hopefully peaceful 2026!
Warm Season‘s Greetings
Yours
Dr. Heinz Aschebrock