Contemplation of the Future

Every judo club needs to look to its future. What happens if the unthinkable happens? What will happen to the club if the sensei leaves? Will the club continue? Who will teach? Who will take care of the paperwork that the sensei does?

Let’s start with what it takes to run a club, specifically Roswell Judo Club. Roswell Judo Club is organized as a sole proprietorship. This is not the best organizational structure, however a 501(c)3 structure costs a fair bit and we are not ready for that. The business aspect, as anathema as that is to many judo instructors, requires tax considerations, such as gross receipts; inventory ordering; scheduling events; and membership filings.

The business considerations require an individual that understands basic bookkeeping, business demands, and judo association guidelines. I certainly won’t say that I’m the world’s best business person at the moment, but I haven’t had anyone volunteer to take over or even learn how the operation works. I probably won’t look into that until 501(c)3 status is attained anyway.

The second aspect of running a club is instructional. Who will teach the classes? Does it require only one instructor or can there be several instructors teaching different classes? Simply put, I think several instructors would be a much greater idea than a single person. Multiple instructors mean that when one must go for the time, the classes aren’t cancelled.

Unfortunately, training instructors is a bit different than teaching judoka. Judoka learn techniques and how to apply those techniques. Teachers need to know the techniques and how to apply them, but that is the least of the concern! Teachers have to know how to transfer that knowledge to their students effectively. A teacher that teaches adults only may or may not be able to teach kids and vice versa. This takes time, both to learn the techniques and learn to teach them.

Right now Roswell Judo Club is not facing this situation, but how far in the future should a club look? In RJC’s case, we have to look about a year and a half to two years in advance. Why do we have to look a year and a half to two years? Currently we don’t have anybody at a level to take over. While we do have two brown belts on the rolls, one is leaving town soon and the other is less available to take over. After these two brown belts our highest grades are orange which will take until at least December of 2011 to move to the low brown belt grade. The most probable case will be May of 2011.

My club members need to understand that I’m not looking at leaving right now. I do want to make it clear that every student should be looking at the future and thinking about what they want to do with their judo. Do you want to be a teacher? Do you want to start your own club? Do you want to just be a club member? All of these are fine and we’ll certainly get you to where you want to be.