A visit from IJF 6th Dan(and Plymouth Girl) Pat Warren

On Saturday thanks to Natasha, Ollie and Izzy we had the privilege of playing host to former President of Zimbabwe Judo, IJF referee and IJF 6th Dan Pat Warren,

Pat who is originally from Judo first took up the sport when she watched a Judo demonstration in Plymouth in 1957 give by the Otani club who were based down on the Plymouth Barbican, The club was formed by Charles Case who was one of the pioneers of Judo in Plymouth along with Reg Smith, John Hansford, Ken Colling and Alan Kimber from their rival Plymouth Judo Club.

On that day Charles was using a young man called Brian Warren as his uke, he would eventually become Pat's husband and they would both emigrate to Rhodesia where the pair of them would help build National Judo in what is now called Zimbabwe. Brian would go onto achieve a 6th Dan of his own and sadly passed away last year.

As Pat was back visiting friends she agreed to come and give Drake a class in her brand of Judo, all of our students were extremely impressed especially our female players and somewhat amazed at this 78 year old lady throwing Mike through the air with a yoko gake! (also at the end of the session she put me into an Aikido wrist lock which she found amusing!)

All in all it was a fabulous session with many of our players seeing the famous red and white block belt for the first time which caused a few ooos and aaaahhhs. We hope to see Pat a lot more in the near future and hope to be able to do something to recognise her contribution to Judo in Plymouth and in Africa

Ross