We interrupt this program....

This weekend was once again the Tennessee State Judo Championships. Once again (for the 6th year in a row I believe) my club was responsible for hosting it.   Of course we also used the custom registration, bracketing and scoring software I wrote.  We ran three mats this year instead of two and had only approximately 160 competitors instead of the 210 we had last year.  I believe that this was largely due to a conflict with another tournament in Atlanta.  I tried to setup a greyhound meet and greet booth for the tournament, but I could only have it outside the venue, and it was supposed to be a low of 16 and a high of 37 that day.  Understandably, the greyhound volunteers felt that would be on the chilly side for the dogs.  I still think it would be a great way to give the dogs exposure to a bunch of people that don't normally see them, but I guess we can do it another year.

I found a couple of videos of the event on YouTube.  A quick simplified summary of the rules of sport Judo are, no kicking and punching, you try to throw the guy cleanly powerfully on the flat of his back for an instant win.  If the match goes to the ground you try to defeat your opponent with an arm bar or choke.  If you spend to much time on the ground without making any progress, they stand you up again.

Start watching at 2:48 if you don't want to see the whole match:

Start watching at 1:23 if you don't want to see the whole match:

You can see my scoreboard software there in the background.

Start watching at 1:23 if you don't want to see the whole match:

I was really impressed by a competitor named Doug Tono.  He was the oldest competitor in the room at over 50, the lightest man in the room, and he dominated both the Senior (17-29 year olds) and Masters (30 and up) in his weight class. These were not just  two person or three person brackets but full brackets with many matches.  Javier who you have viewed above is a fierce competitor in both Judo and Jiu-Jitsu.  Mr Tono had an excellent match throwing Javier for 2 half points to equal a win.

Many thanks to all the volunteers who made this event arguably the smoothest running one we have done so far.