JudoNotes

The Hudson Promotionals were last Saturday.

For this tournament they adopted the new IJF rules for refereeing. There was one referee on the mat and no corner refs. They installed two cameras in the corners and there were at least two (maybe more) judges sitting in front of video screens who reviewed close calls.

Here are 1261 photos (click below):

The above link opens a web page that will load up with hundreds of thumbnails. I recommend giving them a while to load completely, and then you can scroll through them very smoothly. If that overwhelms your browser, try this link, which displays the same photos but is much easier on your browser.

Here's video of the action on Mat 1:

The action on Mat 2:

The action on Mat 3:

There's a new Flickr photo set with 486 photos from the promotionals on May 4. Click any of the thumbnails below to see the whole photo set.

And here are videos, one for each division. Each video contains all the matches in that division, except for the masters video, which contains most of the masters matches.

Sankyu:

Nikyu:

Ikkyu:

Masters:

Here's a YouTube playlist with 27 videos from the promotionals last week.

The tournament was held in a new building next to the one where they used to be. I haven't been out to Tech Judo in quite a while, so I don't know how long this has been the case. I have a sentimental attachment to the old room, having seen so many friends compete there, but the new facility is clearly a step forward.

For one thing, they had four mats going instead of three, so things could move along faster. Women and masters brown belts started at same time as sankyu, nikkyu, and ikkyu.

In another nod to progress, scores were displayed on computer screens instead of flipcards. Again, I'm not sure how long that's been going on.

One more thing I hadn't seen before: all competitors wore white gis. Blue gis were prohibited.

It was great to make it out to a tournament again. Congratulations to all!

Some of you know Robert Siegel from back in the day. Robert started judo as a kid and had already amassed a collection of trophies and medals when I met him in the late 70's, when we were both teens.

Robert and his family were in town for Thanksgiving. I had lunch with him on Wednesday and it occurred to me we could take a walk to the dojo and surprise Sensei and Barbara, whom he hadn't seen in almost 30 years. It was a great reunion, and wouldn't you know, Sensei surprised us. He rummaged in a closet for a minute and produced Robert's nidan certificate from the Kodokan, dated Jan. 13, 1992 and in perfect condition.

Robert's wife and kids came by and Sensei made everybody take an ukemi lesson. Robert practiced some throws on me, to the delight of his kids. After all these years he still had the muscle memory. It was like old times, getting smashed by that tai-otoshi.

I hope we'll have more of these visits in the years to come.

(If the above video doesn't work for you, try this direct link to the page on Vimeo.)

[UPDATE: The matches are all up on Vimeo.]

The Hudson Promotionals were yesterday. We won some, we lost some. Congratulations to J Lee who made batsugan in the sankyu division in his first tournament.

Here's a highlights video, which I posted on Vimeo because I still haven't sorted out my login problems with YouTube:

I'll be posting full matches throughout the day. I have half a mind to switch to Vimeo, but I like having all my Oishi videos in one place, and there are a number of people who have already subscribed to my YouTube feed. Still undecided.

There were a couple of matches I didn't get. As usual there was one that I kicked myself for missing — a big ippon by Mike P near the end of the day. I thought I had it but I had forgotten to press the Record button. Fortunately Mike got it on tape. I'll post it when I get a copy.

Many thanks to Paul Virtue for these videos of Saturday's kata tests.

Alan Best:

John Faulkner:

Karim Wahib:

I don't have time to sort out my YouTube issues right now so I created an account on blip.tv and uploaded the videos there:

Sorry if the video in the above playlist is in a random order — blip.tv is kind of quirky. You can get a more logical order (and bigger video) if you follow this link to my channel.

Congratulations to Alan and Kevin!

I made a YouTube playlist of all the matches I got on video at Saturday's dojo tournament. Unfortunately I got there late and missed Dan and Rudy's match.

I really should learn to use my own camera. This shot of the lineup is a little blurry, but you can see what a good turnout we had.

Everyone from Oishi Judo passed their promotion tests yesterday:

• Arthur Zolotarevsky made shodan, with Will Heinrich as his uke.
• Milton Chacon made shodan, with Jeff Summa as his uke.
• Dan W made shodan, with Mike P as his uke.
• Sensei Dave Williams made sandan, with Jeff as his uke.

Matt Crane was on hand as an alternate uke and Paul Virtue provided moral support.

Congratulations to all! Group photos and two video clips below.

Here are highlights from Saturday's promotionals.

I made a playlist of some of the matches.