Young Judo Club

Annual Garden of England Championships

Swallows Leisure Centre Sittingbourne Kent

Sunday April 20^th 2008

Photo's

This annual Junior Judo Championships was once again a great success with over 500 people attending and all the different Judo Associations being in attendance. The YJC always follow the rules of the International Budo Federation and this year they changed the weight categories and age groups which did create some problems with over 20 children being turned away because they had no one to fight, it did allow a lot more children to win medals. Two other new innovation as 1) each child received a participation medal 2) no child could win a medal without winning a fight, in the past if there were only two children in the tournament one would get a Gold and the other a Silver, this was very unfair on children who were in categories with many children some would win several matches but also lose 2 yet they would not get a medal. It also sends out the wrong message by telling children they can get something for failure and Judo is not just about sport but is a life skill as well. So every medallist in this competition actually won a fight.

The YJC Sittingbourne/Bredgar won 8 Gold’s 9 Silver’s 8 Bronzes, with so many medal winners it is very difficult to write about each individual so I reported on he individuals who were brought to our attention by several Black Belts.

Henry Dwyer, cat 6, u23 kilo, Gold. Young Henry from our Bredgar club caused quite a stir with his cheeky character and superb throwing skills, Sittingbourne’s Kieran Allen put on a very good mature performance by beating the very experienced Phil Denham from Nottingham who normally takes the Gold the only person to beat him in the past was YJC Ben Franks. Kieran completely controlled the match and steadily built up an unbeatable lead. James Mazzetti continues to dominate the heavyweight cat, due to the fact he now trains with the adults and this can be seen in his Judo where the change fro Junior to Senior is apparent.

Miles Brown and John Clarke were both awarded their Class B referees award for some excellent refereeing, both Miles and John classes are doing extremely well . Miles a 2^nd Dan and Coach with both the International Budo Federation and the British Judo Association has his class on a Wednesday in which he deals with Judo Theory and CombatSombo together (this in itself is unique), his lesson although mixed has attracted many women we now have 14 women on the books for Judo, the only club in Swale with this amount of women. John Clarke 4^th Dan has the same coaching qualifications as Miles and his class is a very competitive, with some very hard work outs yet he is pulling in members. This goes against the National norm with society becoming ever softer, in fact so soft that one Judo association no longer expects its members to compete until they reach Black Belt Standard.

The YJC has many events forthcoming in May members are of to Holland, late June YJC Bredgar will hold its Annual Championships, July members travel to Scotland in August Junior members will attending a 2 day residential course at Dibgate ACF Camp and the Seniors will follow for a week long course.

Anyone interested in Judo, Sombo, Kurash, Combatsombo should contact youngjudoclub@yahoo.co.uk or visited our web site www.sittingbourne.org, www.youngjudoclub.co.uk, or telephone 01795 437124. For those who wish to be inter active try combatarts.blogspot.com

Results 2008 YJC Championships