Websites, Manuals, and Writing Stuff

For those of you who visit my website, at all, you may have noticed the very long time it’s been under construction. I apologize. That being said, if you’ve never tried to develop a website, especially on a shoestring budget, you can’t imagine how difficult coming up with content, be that interesting information, pictures or graphics, or any of that other stuff that people go to websites to see, can be. For me, it’s hard to do.

Recently I’ve been concentrating on learning how to be a better instructor and coach for my judo club. The clinics I went to in January were very enlightening. Some things happened that I hadn’t even realized if you read the JudoForum or Gerry Lafon’s blog. I’m not going to bash Gerry or his ideas; I think he’s got some very good ideas, especially when it comes to coaching competitors. I would love to go out to Judo America and spend some time learning from him and his organization! He even brought up a great book for coaches by Rainer Martens called Successful Coaching (the Third Edition!).

Let me talk about Las Vegas first. The events started Saturday morning about 9 am, Las Vegas time. The referee’s “meeting” lead off the affair and they talked about a variety of things, specifically emphasizing the new rule by the IJF regarding the leg grabs. Following the referee’s “meeting” was Lynn Roethke (Silver Medalist at the 1988 Olympic Games) and her clinic on footwork. Mostly the participants in the clinic were females getting ready to compete after the clinic. It was an incredible clinic by an incredibly athletic woman! After the clinic came the tournament. An All-Women’s Judo Tournament!

The tournament has gotten some flack by a wide range of people. I don’t get it. If you follow my posts on JudoForum (RoswellJudoClub) you might see that I did some arguing about it. Simply enough, I don’t care one way or another; however, having watched the tournament, I think it’s a great idea for there to be All-Women’s events. Some people argue that it’s not fair for there to be women’s only events if there aren’t men’s only events. I say, hold your own tournament and decide who gets to show up.

Following the tournament was the USJA Board of Directors meeting. It was a much better run affair than the NMJI meeting, but I wasn’t much involved with either. Least said on that regard the soonest forgotten.

That’s the end of the first day. In my next post, I’ll talk about Sunday’s events…if I remember!