The VJC kids at the BC Winter Games in Fort St. John did very well with a bronze medal showing in the team competition and Kiyoshi Comley added gold there to his first place showings earlier in the month in Kamloops Youth provincials (in both U16-50kg and U18-50). Judo BC streamed the entire BCWG event—with two days of competition still up—on Youtube. When Aubrey competed in judo in ’84 FSJ BCWG, he never expected he’d be back as an off-mat official with his son 36 years later.
We are sending six kids to the inter-club Okanagan Open in Kelowna: Athrun Arav, Chase and Koen Robinson, Finlay Ritson, Blaize Rommel, and Lane Magee.
There are just a couple months left in our regular season but we do have athletes, coaches/referees attending Pacific International, Edmonton International, Canmore Inter-Provincial camp, and Nationals mid May (in Edmonton again this year).
We are gearing up now for the BC Open tournament we host annually at the curling rink—with Kata this year 7PM April 3rd and the Shiai (individual competitions) starting 10AM April 4th. For a change, we expect to have at least couple teams in the Kata event. We will open with odori, courtesy of the chidorikai dancers, and a short composition on our new taiko drum.
We’re down to 20 boxes but the Vernon Judo Club Parents’ Association annual fundraiser is still underway: $15/box for 5 litres of locally-pressed juice (a blend of Bella-Visa-Grown Gala, Spartan, Aurora and Ambrosia—courtesy of Ringo En Orchards). This money supports our athletes by refunding registration fees for competitions, camps and clinics. A special thanks also goes to Tom Ouchi at Ringo En for donating the use of his trailer to get mats to events. There’s no competition without tatami!
