Drake Judo Club @ BJC Cornish Championships

Saturday the 18th of May saw a small team head down to Redruth for the BJC Cornish Championships.

This competition has not been 'Open' for sometime, indeed i attended the last time it was open with Cordelia and Zhivko

As mentioned previously the BJC have some subtle rule changes from the BJA and it was important that we abided by these, Judo is Judo but to experience all the nuance differences is important

Firstly there is no coaching from mat side so my day was considerably easier than usual

Our first players up were Ely and Adair(sadly Nate wasn't able to make it due to illness) both have only been doing Judo a short time but both were very competitive against players who were as highly graded as Orange belt, both showed improvement from their last competition and both came away with a Bronze medal each.

Ned was in a very large group and was fantastic attempting a wide range of throws and scoring a couple of wazaris and his development continues to impress me, no medal for Ned but a solid 5th place

Charlie Warwick was probably the unluckiest player of the day losing his first fight by decision 2:1winning all of his remaining 4 fights to get a bronze which could have easily been gold.

Pheebs had a tough day and she struggled with the rules regarding gripping, competitive as usual in all of her contests, this competition proved to be a good learning experience and gave us some areas to work on as she moves closer to the National Championships at the end of the year.

Will was up next, he has experience of fighting in Cornwall and as rule usually does well, he won a number of contests before sadly being kicked like a tree stump which injured his leg, he then took on Jayden from One and All and just missed out but took home a well deserved bronze

Next came the 'Big Uns'

Liv is still on the recovery path after injury and was a little tentative in her approach in the heavyweight girls section but still proved her usual self by taking a well deserved Silver, only losing the final on a decision.

Maddox who was recovering from an injured ankle at the Nationals was on good form even though he was placed in a higher weigh category, he should have in fact won two gold medals but had to settle for one, He won all of his contests via ippon

Lottie also on the comeback trail has it seems found a ne technique which is working very well for her, a very straightforward series of contest wins to add the Cornish BJC title to her National one from 2 weekends ago

Callum was looking for redemption after his loss at the Bash Teams and so it was to be as a more controlled performance led to straightforward wins including one against the chap who beat him in said teams, his improvement is plain for everyone to see and im positive his work with Gary on a Thursday is a big part of this.

In conclusion this was an excellent competition and we were given a very warm welcome by the BJC community and im hopeful of building strong relationships with them moving forward