This past Saturday, 10 November 2012, Tobias had his first Judo Competition/Tournament. And i think i was more nervous that he was 😉
We were there at 12.45pm to get ready. All the kids were weighed and divided by weight into the different categories. Oh, i forgot to mention this was an internal competition within his club only.
They did warm-ups for the next 45 minutes or so. Then the competition proper started. It lasted for a good 3 hours or more. There were 27 participants/competitors. By the end of it, my jaw ached from being so tensed up on behalf of the kids 😉
i learnt a lot about the different terms they used. When the referee shouts “Yuko”, it is a quarter point (not entirely accurate to say that but that’s how i got it worked out in my head). You have to watch which side he points to after he shouts to know who was given the point. “Waza Ari” is a half point. “Ippon” is a full point and you win the match. “Hajime” means to begin. “Matte” means stop and “Yoshi” means resume. “Shido” is a minor penalty. There are so many more terms but these are the basic ones which i heard most often during the tournament. Here are a couple of websites where you can learn more – JudoInfo.com and JudoChannel. And in case you are interested, here’s the website for his Dojo: Judo und Ju-Jitsu Club Solothurn.
Tobias had 5 matches all together and he won 3 of them (i am soooo proud!). He was awarded a bronze medal. Boy, was he chafed about it. It was not without tears that he won the medal. In his last match (by which time i think he was really tired out), he was pinned down and was struggling to get up. The referee didn’t realise that he was in pain and unable to breathe and when he finally broke off the pin-down, Tobias was in tears and had a big bruise on his left collarbone. He moped in a corner for a bit while the last few matches carried on. i had to go talk to him and give him some water before he would come away from the corner. He said it really hurt. Poor boy.
But by the time they were awarding the medals, he was fine. Here he is with his medal:
Here’s the whole group of competitors together:
And i leave you with a video of his very first match (unedited):
syc
trippingdifferently 
One Reply to “1st Judo Competition…”