Sunday Training (Nov 3)

OK, this Sunday’s session will be at the Uni as usual and normal time of 5pm. I will be dashing back up from the Hants Team comp at St Marys so don’t worry if I am a couple of minutes late.

If anyone fancies coming to watch the competition I can give you a lift back up to Highfield

Hampshire Judo Fest

If you are a judo player in Hampshire, this should be interesting! A day of varied judo activities for all levels of experience.

The end of another year!

So Judo is now done for this academic year – we will be back in September with the bunfight and then into action with those members who are back for another year, and lots of new faces. Keep an eye out for Josh and the committee hunting out volunteers to help kick the year off with a bang.

Its been a fun year coaching everyone, and aside from enjoying watching everyone’s judo develop through the year we’ve not had a bad year in competitions. In particular it was great to see a lot of different people representing the club at the Hampshire Team League where we put in consistently good performances at each round and wrapped up the series as clear winners. After a bit of a delay due to the final round (the only one we couldn’t attend) falling in the Easter holiday, we have now received the trophy. Its very shiny and new, and Southampton University will be engraved on it as the first winners of the competition. Next step will be to try and retain the trophy next year! Here it is in all its glory.

Aside from the team effort, we had a number of significant results for individuals during the year.

• Szymon Buchocki put in a great performance to win the Hampshire Closed at U81, making him Hampshire Champion for 2013. On the back of this performance Szymon was invited to join the Hampshire team for the Southern Area Inter Counties Team competition where he won all his contests and as part of the winning senior mens team
• Helen Baranova came back to Judo with a bang and took silver in the U52 Kyu grade category at BUCS
• Dan Spencer put in a very polished performance to take bronze in the U66 Kyu grade category at BUCS
• Will Betts achieved his 1st Dan, including getting carried away and scoring 40 points at the last grading when he only needed 10!

Looking forward to see what we can do next year, there are at least 3 people who need to get their 1st Dan sorted out! Now I get to be selfish and do some judo myself, see you in September.

Gary

Hampshire Closed 2013

Final fling for the spring term was the Hampshire Closed competition, held this year at St Marys Leisure Centre in Southampton for the first time. The end of term and ongoing injury challenges meant we did not have as many entrants as we might have hoped for but 3 players turned out for an afternoon of Judo – Helen, Szymon and Will, along with occasional visitor to our club Peter

Szymon was first into action in the largest mens category, U81. A not entirely unexpected combination of ippon seoi nage and solid groundwork saw him comfortably through his pool and into the knockout. The pattern continued in the knockout, including a match up with Peter who was unfortunately pushed down to the repechage as Szymon worked his way to the semi final. This was the hardest contest of the day so far but a well timed throw for ippon saw the place in the final booked. Meanwhile Peter got to grips with the repechage and fought his way to a well deserved bronze medal after taking the decision in the repechage final against a strong but tired opponent.

With Szymon’s opponent in the final having shown some good judo we were geared up for the toughest contest yet. In the end however a beautifully timed seoi nage caught us all by surprise and Szymon was the gold medallist and Hampshire champion for 2013.

In the women’s category the number of entries was very low and Helen was part of a convoluted set of overlapping categories aimed at giving everyone a change to compete. There were some strong players present and unfortunately we were not able to see a repeat of the success from BUCS, and were left frustrated by a rather suspect definition of osae-komi! Will also suffered a little at the hands of hasty refereeing decisions with what looked like a solid strangle about to be locked in stopped rather too quickly and he was unable to make it into the knockout

On the whole a great event with a good atmosphere. It was good to see so many of the Hampshire clubs taking part and hopefully timing will allow us to enter more players next year, especially if it is held on our doorstep again

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Merry Christmas

Hope everyone has enjoyed judo this term. We are back with the usual sessions in the new year starting from the first Tuesday of next term. Don’t forget that you’ll brain will appreciate a break from revision!

For the guys aiming for the University Championships, you need to remember that they are a month earlier this year, at the end of February. This means that you will have around 1 month less time to prepare for the competition than in previous years, and that affects fitness work, judo, and weight management. So do try and make the most of your time off to put in some solid cardio work, don’t go too mad on the Christmas goodies, and we’ll see you back on the mat keen and ready to go on January 8.

Have a great break!

Hampshire Team Competition – round 3

Time flies, and its the beginning of the month again and time for another round of the Hampshire Team competition. The first 2 rounds have been good fun and we went into round 3 with the added bonus of leading the overall league table.

With a few injuries meaning we had no options for a female team member we started out one person down; however the ladies present had other ideas and decided they would club together to take on the men and 4 person teams were the order of the day.

Gentle persuasion on our beginners had started to have an effect and this time we had Tom along for his first ever judo competition. It was great to see a growing number of beginners lining up in other teams too; which is after all the point of this series of events.

Nice to have club members coming down to support the team too – Mehrdad came down to check the competition out and ended up being “gently” persuaded to grab a judogi and help out the undermanned Solent Uni team, while Charlotte came down to show off her posh new sling and did a great job of one handed photography.

Along with ourselves and the ladies’ composite team, teams from Holbrook and Solent Uni meant we had a round robin contest between 4 teams again.

There were great fights in each of the contests, and the novice players in particular were learning some valuable lessons such as “4 minutes is a long time when its a judo contest!”.

We were lucky enough to have the strongest team on paper and there were nice composed performances from the more experienced players. Tom has some experience in other martial arts but this was his first judo competition, but that didn’t stop him getting stuck in and finding out what its like to make the step up from randori.

He was pretty happy after his first win.

Guesting for Solent Uni meant that Mehrdad was matched against Tom for our final match of the day. It was one of the best matched contests of the day and went for the full 4 minutes including a long ne-waza exchange. In the end however Mehrdad took the win thanks to an early waza-ari score

Mehrdad was pretty happy with his win too!

The rest of the day went to plan, with ne-waza wins from Will and Szymon and nice ippon throws from Dan.

The final score left us the winning team for the second time from 3 rounds which should give us a sound lead in the league table.

Great performances from all teams, with nice judo and a good sporting approach to the day. Really looking forward to the next round and I hope we can encourage more beginners to come and take part and hopefully other clubs can as well.

Thanks to Mehrdad for stepping up and helping out the Solent Uni guys, and to Charlotte for taking great photos despite only having one arm in action.

Full photo set here – http://www.flickr.com/photos/southamptonuniversityjudo/sets/72157632157630904/with/8238643601/

No Judo sunday – Dec 2nd

Remember, no judo this Sunday as we are taking a team to the Hampshire Team Competition. If you want to come along and support it is 3pm on sunday at St Marys Leisure Centre

http://www.ihampshire.co.uk/profile/281149/Southampton/St-Marys-Leisure-Centre/

London University Open 2012

This weekend was the 2012 edition of the London University Open – the third one that we have attended. For a change it had moved from the fairly convenient Uxbridge location to the University of East London’s sports centre in Docklands. That meant a pretty antisocial start time but after a dawn tour of central London Christmas lights, we arrived at just after 8am, in need of coffee.

We had five people entered (Charlotte, Dan, Josh, Szymon and Riccardo), and girls were up first so Charlotte was the first person on the mat.

With entries split by weight, grade, and age, some categories were small and Charlotte ended up lined up with a best of 3 situation with one other u70kg green belt. The first fight was unfortunately lost after a strong start when a tani-otoshi attempt was countered; we had a good plan to even things up in fight 2 but a bad landing led to Charlotte re-injuring her left shoulder and a painful end to the day for her but with a nice silver medal for her trouble

Next up Dan and Josh were on adjacent mats in the u73 and u81 3rd/2nd kyu category.

Josh had a pool of 4 players and started his first fight strongly with some good attacks, unfortunately the fight went on a touch too long, fitness was the decider and and Josh was caught for ippon with 15 seconds to go. With other fights coming fast there was little chance to recover and despite best efforts, no medal this time.

In Dan’s category there were 2 pools of 3 and keen to guarantee a medal Dan went out in determined mood. The first contest went almost immediately to the ground and an ippon hold. The second contest was over even quicker with a nice uchi mata for ippon.

With the pool dealt with the next contest was the semi final. This was a tougher affair with players very evenly matched. After good attacking judo from both sides the contest went all the way through golden score to hantei. Unfortunately, a good sode tsuri komi goshi attempt that would have scored a clear koka in old money was enough for Dan’s opponent to take the decision and go through to the final but the bronze medal was well deserved.

Final act for us was the u81 dan grade category with Szymon and Riccardo taking part. A look around as the players gathered made it obvious it was going to be a tough proposition with many players sporting patches from international competitions and GB/england squad badges.

Riccardo was first up and put on a positive display which saw him start to edge out an advantage as his opponent was penalised for passivity. Unfortunately a moment’s lapse in concentration saw him caught with ippon seoi nage for ippon.

Szymon’s first contest was with one of those GB squad players. It was a hard fought battle but ultimately Szymon was out powered and dropped to the repechage knock out with Riccardo. His opponent moving on to ultimately take silver.

In the repechage the tough draw continued and there was no joy there either. Szymon’s luck was to move from an eventual finalist to then tackle an eventual bronze medallist!

While we have returned with more medals from this tournament before, the main aim was to get out and see where we need to do work before BUCS and everyone fought with great spirit and desire. Stand out performance of the day was Dan’s bronze medal which came from some very well executed contests.

Sunday training – back to normal

After a couple of weeks hiatus due to other events taking place, Sunday training is back to normal this Sunday. Usual place, 5pm-7pm.

See you there!

No Session this Sunday (11 Nov)

Just a reminder – no Sunday session this week as a bunch of us will be in Chichester for the Southern Universities Training day.

Back to normal next weekend. If you aren’t coming to Chichester and want to get some training in, why not pop along to see the guys at Solent Uni. Their session at St Mary’s Leisure Centre is at 530pm