What’s Up With The USJA?

AnnMaria De Mars and Jim Pedro, respectively the president and vice-president of the USJA, resigned a few weeks ago. Pedro did so during a conference call meeting of the USJA Board of Directors, and De Mars resigned the following day.

Emotions are running high. Some USJA members are threatening to pull out of the USJA and join USA Judo.  Makes sense to me- NOT.  If there was ever a dysfunctional, worthless group to join, it would have to be USA Judo. So guys, knock yourselves out and join USA Judo if you think it’s going to care more about your opinions and welfare.

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Youth Technical Director

“Player development continues to be the core of what we do. By its very nature it’s a long-term process, so it may not be as sexy as announcing a national team competition or coach or winning medals, but it’s actually probably the most important thing we do.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if this were coming from USA Judo? Well, it didn’t come from USA Judo. It came from U.S. Soccer’s president, when he introduced the federation’s newly appointed youth technical director.

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Tournament Stuff

Several of my blogs have generated some great information from my readers, so this blog will be devoted to sharing that information with you.

Mike Darter, the founder of the Judo Podcast, was kind enough to introduce me to Score Judo, a Judo scoreboard for PC, which was developed in Australia as an application for use by all bona fide judo clubs anywhere in the world free of charge.

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About Promotions

My daughter Valerie, who started a Judo club last month, is now addressing the one thing she had not yet tackled or thought of very deeply- rank promotions. Like many elite players, she is so oblivious to rank that periodically she’ll ask me, “What rank am I, dad?”  Now that she’s a coach and responsible for the development of her own students, rank takes on a whole new meaning, even though she couldn’t care less about her own rank.

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