JudoNotes

On the day we moved the Coke machine to my office (I'll post more on this later), I was given custody of maybe a hundred dusty VHS tapes. I've been sifting through them, and there is some good stuff. There is also some gold.

The good stuff includes highlights from major judo and wrestling tournaments, including footage from the Olympics. There are also instructional videos for kata, grappling, and such. There is a copy of Shane, which makes sense to me, considering Sensei's favorite movie is High Noon, or so I've been told. There's a copy of Blood on the Sun, starring Jimmy Cagney, who learned judo for the fight scenes. We all know Sensei is a golf nut, so of course there are a couple of golf videos.

All good stuff, but to me the real gold, the stuff we should put in a museum and hire a curator for, is the videos of some dojo tournaments between 1993 and 1998. There are some great matches and some great nostalgia value. I wasn't around during those years, so it's been a lot of fun seeing younger versions of Nina, Will, Bob, and Jeff, to name just a few, and to contemplate how far they've come since then.

I'd love to know who the videographers were. I know there were at least two, because for one tournament I have two camera angles.

After I've digitized all the tournaments, I'm going to select some clips to put on a DVD. I'll post some of them to YouTube as well. In the meantime, here's Sensei doing nagekomi with Will, shortly after a dojo tournament on April 9, 1994. It's this clip that inspired the title of this post.

Sensei Williams reminds us what it's all about.

Oishi Judo had a good turnout for the Hudson Promotionals yesterday. Congratulations on quite a few strong performances.

I've posted YouTube videos of all the Oishi matches I was able to get, along with the ever-popular highlights reel. I have questions about two of the matches — see my notes next to the links below. If you have an opinion or a clarification, I'd appreciate a note in the blog comments below, or in an email.

The highlights reel has become something of a tradition. It started when I put together three ippons by Milton from the promotionals last October. Then in February Sensei suggested I put together highlights from the dojo tournament we had. Folks responded positively to that video, especially folks who couldn't be there for the tournament, and it's been a tradition ever since. In fact, for the Liberty Bell I posted only highlights.

Okay, here are yesterday's matches:

• Paul [What do you folks think about the call?]
• Jean-Ezra 1 — Jean-Ezra 2 — Jean-Ezra 3
• Nina 1 — Nina 2 — Nina 3 — Nina 4 — Nina 5
• Austin
• Ron
• Bob 1 — Bob 2 — Bob 3 — Bob 4 — Bob 5
• Will 1 [What do you think the judges were conferring about? Who was that first ippon awarded to, and why was it waved off?] — Will 2 — Will 3
• Ian 1 — Ian 2
• Matt

And here's the highlights reel:

Thanks to Sandro for the ride to North Bergen, and thanks to Dan for the ride back.

Tournament season is upon us:

• A bunch of Oishi players competed in the Liberty Bell tournament on April 1. Ian Schuler took silver in his Masters division. I put a 20-second highlights video on YouTube:
  
  
  
  
• Jeff Summa took third in his Masters division at the Nationals in Miami, during the weekend of the 22nd.
• On April 29, Jean-Ezra Yeung took first at the Cranford Invitational with a "left-gripped right-handed ippon seoi-nage."

Congratulations to all!