Hampshire Team League Round 2

Today was the second round of the Hampshire Team League, at Solent University’s sports centre in St Marys. It was nice to see one more team than last time and with most teams fielding a full 5 players the whole event felt like a positive step forward from the first round.

Four teams lined up, ourselves plus Fleming Park, Holbrook and Southampton City/Solent University. The event was fought in a round robin style so every team had 3 contests.

Southampton City and Fleming Park got things started with the win going to Fleming Park, then it was Southampton Uni and Holbrook. Ricardo, Szymon and Josh got things off to a flying start with ippon wins through a nice mix of throws and groundwork. After a debate about matching player sizes, Will got underway and deployed his favoured mix of sacrifice throws and groundwork to win with a submission. Final tally 4-1 to Southampton Uni.

Our next contest was another run of the local derby against the Southampton City/Solent Uni club. This time we seemed to be offering a submission masterclass with 3 contests ended with strangles and again a final score of 4-1 in our favour.

Our final contest was against Fleming Park and at this point we each had 2 wins apiece, making this effectively the final. It was always going to be the toughest match of the day for us and after Szymon put on another nice groundwork display to put us in the lead, Riccardo and Josh got caught out and both lost by ippon. Will was able to level things up with another groundwork win which put us at 2-2 and Charlotte in the hot seat. Her opponent had been looking dangerous with submissions by armlock in all previous contests, but after settling into the contest Charlotte scored 2 yukos and then finished up with a great ippon from Tani-otoshi in the last 30 seconds.

A good day of friendly competition with everyone scoring wins by ippon and we came out on top with 3 wins to Fleming Park’s 2.

Some pictures here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/southamptonuniversityjudo/sets/72157631927864511/

The next round is December 2 – can we field 2 teams next time?

Sunday Training – Nov 4

A reminder – no training session this sunday (Nov 4) as we are off to the 2nd round of the Hampshire Team Competition.

Currently I have enough confirmed names (Will, Josh, Szymon, Riccardo) for one team. It would be good to get a few more people along so if you want to take part, let me know! In particular we could use a lady for the team(s), don’t make me buy a wig!

If you don’t fancy taking part, come on down anyway and make some noise to support the team and we can all go for a drink afterwards. The competition is from 3pm-6pm at St Marys Leisure Centre, St Mary’s Road, SO14 0BL

Sunday training updates

Hi folks

A few tweaks and changes in Sunday training for the next few weeks for you to be aware of and plan for:

Oct 28 – this sunday
Back to the normal 5pm start after last week’s 530pm kick off.
Don’t forget that the clocks are changing!

Sunday Nov 4
The second round of the Hampshire Team Tournament is taking place, at Solent Uni again.
This takes place from 3pm to 6pm so overlaps our session. I think we should be able to muster 2 teams this time and it would be great to go down with teams, take along anyone not competing to watch and cheer everyone on, then head round the corner to the pub for a couple of drinks.

If you want to be part of a team please drop me a note with your weight, BJA license number and license expiry date (some of you who have expressed interest need to renew!) and I will start to figure out if we can get 2 whole teams together. If you just want to come down and watch, let me know too so I can keep you up to date with what is happening.

Sunday Nov 11
This week, there will be a South East Universities training session taking place in Chichester. The session will be 10am-4pm, with a technical session in the morning and randori in the afternoon. If you want to come along please let me know so that I can plan transport. You must be graded to at least 6 Kyu and there will be a small charge towards transport and the session.

Gary

Late start on Sunday

The session this Sunday will start a little later than normal at 530pm – I am at a coaching course and its likely to be a bit tight getting back for 5pm. If anything changes I will post an update so check on Sunday afternoon if you can

Bunfight!

Club captain Josh, the rest of the committee, and a handful of willing helpers are all down at the SUSU bunfight promoting the club today.

If you fancy finding out more about judo, head on down to the old sports hall on the bottom floor of SUSU, say hello and find out about our taster sessions, offers for beginners and plans for this year.

Gary

Day 2 at the Olympic Judo

Owen and I spent the day watching u66 and u52 action today. Some good judo, a little controversy, and finally contests won by Team GB!

My pick of my photos here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/garyhill/sets/72157630810173504/detail/

Last session of the year

Tomorrow night (Thursday 14th) will be the last judo session for this academic year. So if you are still in southampton it would be good to see you on the mat one more time before you head off for the summer.

Usual time and place!

For those of you leaving Southampton for the last time, good luck, and don’t forget to find a new judo club as soon as possible! If you want to keep up with what is going on with the club get yourself onto our Facebook group if you aren’t already there and/or watch the club website.

If you would like to ensure you hear about opportunities to come back and visit, such as the alumni sports day, drop me a line with an email address that will work after you leave and I will add you to our alumni list.

End of year sessions

Only a couple more weeks of term, but sessions are running as long as people are showing up for them. So if your exams are over, come and get some exercise to recover!

This weekend there is a sunday session, but the extended bank holiday means the Students Union is closed, so there will not be a session on Tuesday. Back to normal on Thursday!

No session on Sunday May 13

Remember – no judo on Sunday as I am away again. There _will_ be a Sunday session on May 20!

(don’t forget, other sessions are available!)

Alumni Sports Day

Yesterday was the Alumni Sports Day that we took part in for the second time. I have just checked and the Last time we were part of it was in 2007 and that time we had 6 man teams and the final result was 3-3 with the win awarded to the university by points.

This time we had a range of alumni along to join in the fun, ranging from those who had graduated in the 80s, to ex-captain Matt who graduated last year.

After a warm up and a quick assessment of the attendees we drew up a 7 person team draw that let most attendees take part in the competition. Everyone fought with enthusiasm and although some people had done little judo recently or were relatively new to the sport we saw a great range of techniques and some very close contests.

The alumni team took an early lead with 3 wins and that left the university players with a lot of work to do if they were to win again.

Josh turned the tables by submitting Matt in the 4th contest with a strangle. Dan however then turned the tables by holding Richard for Ippon after a hard fought match.

Current club captain Andrew took on Filipe who is returning to judo after a break and they fought hard for the full 4 minutes with neither able to break through the others defence to register a score. Finally it was left to Ricardo to finish on a positive note for the university team, holding down Andy for ippon.

So the final result was 4-2 to the alumni team. Full results below

University	Points	Duration	Points	Alumni
Hakan Pekmeczi	–	2m40s	10 (throw)	Paul Gregory
Vlad Niste	–	2m10s	10 (hold)	James Haestier
Oli Maurice	–	1m21s	10 (throw)	Mark Blundell
Josh Davies	10 (strangle)	1m21s	–	Matt Vincent
Richard Kapend	–	3m33s	10 (hold)	Dan Varndell
Andrew Douglass	–	4m00s	–	Filipe Araujo
Riccardo Castelli	10 (hold)	1m21s	–	Andy Middleton

The session finished with some more informal randori before we retired to the pub to keep Andy happy! If we can get even more people along to do the same thing again next year that would be great so if you are in touch with anyone else who used to be in the club, then let them know and get them to drop us a line. And hopefully those who were unable to come for a variety of reasons this year will be able to come next time.