One of the last questions I posed my daughter Valerie when I interviewed her for the Outgrowing the Garage post I wrote two weeks ago was, “What words of wisdom would you have for anyone who wanted to start teaching Judo?” Her response surprised me a little, but it made sense.
I was all set to tackle my weekly blog post yesterday, when I was notified that my father Pierre had passed away unexpectedly at age 87 in Cannes, France. He was in excellent health, and I had assumed he’d live to be 100 just like his father had. Instead, he caught a virulent form of pneumonia and died within two days of being admitted to the hospital. So today, I get to talk about my dad.
Over the years, I’ve had many inquiries about starting a Judo club from scratch. My first impulse is to encourage coaches to start in a garage and then move into bigger facilities once membership can sustain the overhead. And that’s what SoCal Judo did in Temecula, California.
As a follow up to my last post (Show me the evidence!) I’m happy to announce that I’ve created a Facebook group, which is dedicated to bring together the Judo community that is disenchanted with IJF’s misguided leadership. The group is called the International Judo Freestyle Alliance. The idea for this group comes from Steve Scott, the founder of AAU Freestyle Judo rules. He picked my brain, asked me what I thought, and voila! A voice of sanity.
Several months ago, I had a heated discussion with my assistant coach who happens to be an international referee. As usual, the conversation revolved around the silly IJF rules, and how he could not support my transition away from IJF rules Judo to my own version of Judo competition, which is similar to AAU Freestyle Judo. Upon telling him that I needed to move on in order to keep Judo relevant, and that lots of people had similar concerns and had made the same decision as I had, he demanded that I show him the evidence. Furthermore, he stated that he wasn’t interested in Judo that can’t be done outside the dojo. Small mind.
I’ve been working on developing a character development and leadership program for my juniors. As a U.S. Marine, I remember the core values that made me a Marine- honor, courage, commitment. Since I don’t really have time to reinvent the wheel, I am liberally borrowing from Marine Corps character and leadership principles.