20 April 2011

Las Cruces

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to Las Cruces and help out at a tournament. I’ve been to a few so this wasn’t that big I thing, I thought. However, it turns out that I was running a scoreboard, brackets, and helping others learn how to keep both match time and osaekomi time! This I had never done before.
Thankfully I paid attention when I went to Denver for their tournament and discovered how simple the quarter, dime, nickel, penny method of bracketing was. I used that and ran through all of the divisions pretty seamlessly. The matches went well with only one disqualification, which was because one individual though it would be good to taunt his competitor.

I also had the opportunity to work with a very diligent student from the NMSU Judo Club. I’ve worked with her and chatted with her a number of times and have been consistently impressed with her willingness and dedication to learn judo no matter who is teaching it.

We worked on Sunday for about an hour and a half on a variety of topics. Thanks to AnnMarie DeMars, Gerald Lafon, Paul Nogaki, and others for teaching me that a clinic should be limited to only a handful or less of topics. We started working with some basic conditioning drills and exercises that she can do solo. After that we talked about Tai Otoshi, a turnover, and an armlock from guard. It was a very fast hour and a half and I believe she came out of the session with a fair amount of information that she can use!

I have to say, all in all, it was a good weekend! Many thanks to Oscar, Toby, Nadia, and Ashley for letting me bend your ears a little bit and help out where I can!

03 April 2011

What's Happening Now!

The latest and greatest from the Roswell Judo Club!

It’s been a hectic few months for me. All the classes are going wonderfully. The college class has only lost one student, but that’s because he moved; all 7 remaining are doing wonderfully and progressing right on course. The adult program seems to have fallen by the wayside for people not involved in the college class. The youth program is doing wonderfully!

Since the middle of March to yesterday, we’ve been to two tournaments and on the 16th we’re headed to Las Cruces for one more. We might go to New Mexico State Games, but we’ll have to see about that. On the 19th of March Eddy and I went to the Denver Spring Tournament in Denver where Eddy had his first tournament experience. It was a good experience with Eddy placing second in his division in some very hard fought matches. He also fought in the advanced division fighting five more incredibly tough matches.

Yesterday, 2 April 2011, we took four kids down to the LC Grappling tournament in Carlsbad, NM. It was a long day starting at 7am to drive down there. The tournament started about 10:15am and lasted until almost 1 pm. Everybody had at least two matches, many having more. We came home with 3 medals, one gold medal (Go Gabriel!) and two silver medals (Yea Joel and Xavier!). Loren IV fought hard in his matches but was a little undersized losing to throws both times, though his hold-downs were good when he got the chance.

  


The April 16th tournament is with Guzman’s down at Mayfield High School in Las Cruces. I don’t know who exactly is going yet, but I expect to take at least two or three.

What’s in Store?

We’re gearing up for summer! Expect more information on the summer programs we’re going to offer in the next few weeks! I expect that we’ll start a new class of beginners starting in June, so current students recruit your friends! If you want to try judo, summer is just the time to get started! We expect to offer a judo activity during the Yucca Recreation Center’s summer program which will be taught by Alana. Parents, that’s a great way to keep your kids busy during the summer, enroll them in the Yucca Recreation Center’s summer program where they’ll get to try a lot of activities and not be at home vegging out on the couch in front of the TV/Wii/Xbox/PS3!

We’re trying to get Tony, Daniel, and Cody back again this summer for another wonderful clinic! Last year was wonderful and it would be great to have them back for our senior students to have some fun learning from different instructors!

Also, if anybody’s headed to Roswell and you think you’d like to give a clinic on something, feel free to drop a line to our instructor!