Young Judo Club & Sittingbourne Judo Society
Compete in Poland Saturday June 10th 2006
Members of the above club participated as part of the International Budo Federation England Judo Team, the clubs had 4 competitors plus two referees and several supporters. Team members were Stevie and Connor Wratten, Tom Matthews, Perri Mortimer, referees Dave Boulding 6th Dan, Trevor Waghorn 3rd Dan, Martin Clarke 8th Dan organised the whole England Team.
The event was the Annual IBF Multi Nation Judo Championships, which is promoted as the friendly championships and is designed for the ordinary club member with the idea of promoting international friendship between Judoka. This event is still a hard fought competition with National pride still at stake. Ostroda was the host town for this event and is the capital of the Ostroda district of Poland for those who know their history pre 1918 this region was known as East Prussia and is in the North of Poland. Poland is a beautiful country with beautiful lakes and forest, the people are very friendly, food and drink is cheap, as they have not entered the Euro yet, it is an ideal place for a holiday. The down side is that has suffered for nearly half a century with a socialist dictatorship with bad infrastructure, buildings, bridges , flyover’s etc in a very bad state of repair maybe if the Polish workers who have invaded this country had staid at home Poland would be in a better shape. The England team stopped in a Castle in the country, which had a mass of grounds and lakes, members even took advantage of a Horse and Trap ride to experience the local countryside.
Over the last 10 years most Judo organisations have moved to a system of weights in certain age bands i.e. in most cases 2-year age bands compared with the old system weights in a 8 to 15 years age band. This may be a fairer method but has resulted in youngsters having fewer matches, many having just one fight to win a Gold thus less matches less practise and an overall fall in standards as compared with 10 years ago, this can be said of this tournament every fighter had a minimum of two fights and to make a silver or gold you had a minimum of 5 matches. The Poles and Lithuanians were particular hard fighters they still have that hardness form the years of being under the communist yoke and the only way out was to be good at sport.
Brothers Stevie and Conner Wratten were both in the age group born in 1998/99 and under 26 kilos, Stevie lost all his three fights being the younger he did not have the experience, Conner faired some what better managing to get to the Bronze fight of but sadly lost. Perri Mortimer girls born 92/93 under 37 k is no stranger to winning medals and is rated as the best female competitor in Swale, the weight she had to compete in was the lowest for her age but she still gave away a lot of weight and height to her opponents. This was one of the hardest competitions she has had to date, with every match being like a final in the UK she done extremely well to take a well earned silver. Tom Matthews boys born 94/95 weight u41 kilo was one of the shortest in his weight but he just had oodles of confidence his first two matches finished in under 20 seconds when he reached what was we thought was the finals, he became a little to over confident and got caught with a sucker throw and we all thought he had to make do with silver but the Poles were using some weird system that points were more important then wins and Tom was declared the Gold medallist.
The club has been very successful over the last 49 years in producing players of national, international and Olympic standard in all the different Judo associations, although Tom and Perri are to young to be able say they are Olympic games material they have the dedication, skills and most importantly the Coaching staff to maybe one day be as they say a “contender”
Anyone interested in Judo should ring 01795 437124, www.youngjudoclub.co.uk youngjudoclub@yahoo.co.uk
The Young Judo Club is organising a summer camp at ACF Camp Dibgate Folkestone in August please contact the above for more information