Monday 22 December 2014

Big Judo End of Year Grading

Sorry it has take a little while to get pictures of the grading up unfortunately a power outage at our house killed my computer so was offline for a couple of days.  Sorry for the delay.

The grading went really well. In summary:

  •  The grading was run in a traditional format bringing a large group of our team together for the event;
  • We graded 41 kids.;
  • At the top end we now have 5 kids well on their way to Orange belts and 10 new Yellow belts;
  • The kids were well behaved and we were able to get through the process pretty quickly;
  • We also had lots of parents and grandparents there supporting the kids ;
  • Finally, we were very well supported with assessors and visitors and the following people helped us out:


o   David Mair – A Fourth Dan Black belt who spent nearly a decade in Japan, is a very experienced coach and a key technical sounding board for me
o   Rob Levy – A Fifth Dan Black Belt and the current National Coach
o   Brent Cooper – A Seventh Dan Black belt, New Zealand’s most successful Judo Olympian, Commonwealth Games Gold medalist and the current National Technical Director

The bottom line though is that Tracey, Jordan, Geoff and Henry have worked hard all year and their efforts paid off with a really good result. One of the best things about being involved in Big Judo is seeing the instructors grow and develop- Well done team. 
The team getting ready to start.



Another view this time showing the instructors and assessors lined up and ready to go.
Rob Levy ran the warm up and you can see Dave warming up with the kids.


Dave running the Yellow Belts through their paces. 

Henry Wu helping Dave discuss some technical points with the Yellow Belts. 


The White Belts lined up and getting their results 1 or 2 Yellow Tags. The kids going for full Yellow Belts and Orange Tags are sitting along the back wall



My new favourite photo of me doing Judo! It is enormously satisfying to see such a nice group of kids (and adults) enjoying Judo together.