The Club ended our 2024-25 season with our BC Open Tournament April 25-26 at the Curling Rink, a regional kata clinic (nage-no-kata and katame-no-kata) May 3-4, and a pizza party May 12th .
The tournament was a good success. There were just under 100 participants but the number expanded to nearly 150 when considering that many were registered in 2 or sometimes 3 divisions. Rick Pollon assumed co-tournament director position with George Okazaki (as Donna Hanson and Sydney Grevatt were in Peru as referees for the Pam Ams). Our head referee was Bruce Figarson from Delta. Thanks to a grant from the BC Games Society, Brian and Aubrey were able to break in new equipment [including “new” (refurbished business) PCs, radios, monitor stands, and webcams used in the scoreboard and match replay systems]. Thanks also to the Kamloops Judo Club (who provided half of the competition mats), the Chidori Kai dancers, and Vernon “Oka” Taiko.
The tournament equipment arrived in the nick of time as we’d been using donated laptops for many years and their batteries are no longer good and they can’t be upgraded passed windows 10 (which goes off support this year).
We had four competitors (AJ Mizuyabu, Emily Harvey, Nolan Label, and Emilyn Pohl), two referees (Rick Pollon and Aubrey Comley), and one coach (Wade Harvey) at Provincials in Prince George, where Emily and Emilyn both took Silvers in their U14 divisions.
We are in summer slowdown mode now, working on kata (with four attending the June grading in Steveston: Brian Yakura for shodan (with Sydney and Aubrey working with him on kata and gokyo) and Aubrey and Donna as uke for Kathy Hubble of Lake Country as she goes for godan).
We hope to send two or more instructors to a Judo BC planning conference later in June.
Preparation is already underway for next season: (1) To host the interprovincial fall camp in September. Though the guest instructor hasn’t been announced yet, we have outgrown our venue and will be moving from the Seaton Secondary gym to the multiplex north end arena. (2) Run the head table/electronics/draws for the BC Winter Games in Trail in 2026. This will be a nostalgic event for Brian as he was there as an athlete back in 1982.
There is also some interest in getting kids out to other clubs over the summer and perhaps forming a kodomo-no-kata (kids’ kata) team.
