DJC @ Kazoku Green & Under Competition
With Drake rolling out the generations at South Brent on Saturday, it was the turn of some of the Gen1 players to join in with some of the keener younger generations on Sunday at Kazoku Judo Club’s Green and Under Competition, held at Porthtowan; probably the nicest village hall in the country as it has its own beach!
Once everyone had navigated their way there (there were a few satnav failures) and weighed in, the judoka were grouped by weight, grade and experience, so everyone had a relatively balanced group to fight with. Mike and Ros were in the matside chairs today.
The lighter red belts were up first and after the first group were through, Mia was the first Drake judoka called up. Some lovely judo from Mia in a mixed up group; with her winning one contest and getting held in another but coming away from deepest darkest Cornwall with thoroughly well deserved gold medal.
Nate and Izzy were up next. What can we say about the Termi-Nate-or? The boy is an ippon machine, whether it is in standing or groundwork, he just gets the job done. Perhaps adopting a more cautious approach today than we’ve normally seen, Nate ground out a couple of newaza wins to take another gold medal home. He’s going to need an impressively large medal rack ….
Izzy was an absolute star today. With quiet encouragement from the side lines from Mum (lol), Izzy set to her job with a steely determination, hanging on in there and then surprising herself with her judo. The look of joy on her face when the results were announced made the day! Another gold to the DJC tally.
Will, Alanna and Bogdan were called up next. Will is one of those judoka that you can watch develop in front of your eyes. Every fight there was something new. There are still occasions when his famed ippon seio nage into ko soto gake combination gets taken out like an old friend, but today (and yesterday) it hardly got a look in. In a mixed up group, Will took out the fights that mattered but came up a little short against a tough orange belt from Kingsley which didn’t make any difference to the gold medal that Will had round his neck.
Our senior orange belts started strongly, with Alanna winning against her old adversary TJ from the host club and then having a much simpler match with a 60kg player. Another gold for Alanna.
Bodgan was a much more controlled self, having been given some very
clear instructions from Mike on things to concentrate on. He was probably concentrating too much and almost got caught, but he recovered to win all his bouts for another gold medal.
Last group to be called included Erin, Jake and Lottie. Erin was her usual bouncy self and showed some great composure under pressure to turn challenging positions into wins. A lovely tani otoshi helped in one fight! Gold again for Squirt!
JB was oozing confidence, perhaps a touch too much when trying for another 2 second ippon in his first fight, but after a scare, he focussed on the job in hand. The second fight was a classic JB win, ko soto gari into tate shiho gatame. No one gets out of that. Gold number 8.
Lottie had a best of three against a lighter and lower graded judoka and was her usual focussed self. A six second ippon in the first; a trademark sankaku gatame turnover drew gasps before a thunderous o goshi in the last getting more oohs from the crowd. Playing to the audience? Well maybe, but job done in bringing in gold number nine for Drake.
Well done all. Nine judoka entered; nine gold medals won. Summing up with Mike and Ros afterwards and we could only recall two contests lost. With our Gen1 orange belts moving out of the under 12 category next year to mix it with the under 16’s, it appears as though we have a bumper crop of younger players to take on the mantle.
Competitions take a pause for a while now for many. Not all, however, with our REDs 4 off to England training next weekend before a weekend’s rest prior to the British Schools National Championships in Sheffield and then the prestigious Sportif International over the Easter weekend. No rest for the wicked.
