Hello Everyone!
Wow, what a year! Welcome to the 510 Judo end of year wrap up!
In January, we had our award ceremony for the 2019 competition team, giving out commemorative coins to all team members, as well as some special awards.
- Highest Winning Percentage: David Awunyo-Akaba
- Spirit Award: Isaac Okajima
- Most Improved: Josiah Kirkland
- MVP: Junn Kim
At that same award ceremony, my sensei Dr. Alex Feng and his judo colleague Brad Burgo surprised me with a third degree black belt promotion. What a thrill! Although ultimately the difference between one rank and the next doesn’t make or break you, it’s always nice to be recognized and have a marker along your martial arts journey.
Later in January we had our second ever in house tournament, with some special guests from Griffin Performance Judo, Smash Gyms Milpitas, and Omar Kasdi BJJ participating. It was a lot of fun, despite being a bit cramped. I definitely have more respect for people who run successful tournaments, it’s a tough job. Special thanks to Sensei Mark, Sensei Jennifer, Sensei Minobu, my wife Emilana, and everyone else who participated or volunteered to make the event a success. Thank you to Sensei Adham Ramadan from Griffin Performance and Sensei Michael Jen from Smash Gyms for bringing some competitors to the mats.
Weekend Open Mat at Tri-Valley Judo in Pleasanton
Another great thing we had going in our local east bay judo community was a rotating series of weekend open mats for kids, held at places like Smash Gyms in Milpitas, Tri-Valley Judo in Pleasanton, and Z-Mata in Castro Valley. There were many dozens of kids, and perhaps even over a hundred at some events, for 10-12 rounds of friendly randori. Many of our kids participated in this wonderful non-competitive shared learning experience.
“Once All This Is Over…” I’m really looking forward to getting those open mats going again.
In February the highlight was the San Jose Buddhist Judo tournament, the largest competition in Northern California with over 700 competitors. 510 Judo turned in a number of excellent performances from kids to adults, earning quite a few medals and ending the day in 14th place as a team out of 163 dojos. Way to go team!!!
In the first weekend of March, a much smaller team took the trip down to Clovis for a much smaller tournament. We had a good time – Kingston took a silver in the kids division, Eric took gold in the adult division, and Gaetano was a good sport despite not getting any matches.
Little did we know, that would be the last tournament for all of 2020…
On Friday, March 13th, we shut our doors for what we all thought would be “two weeks to flatten the curve.” And here we are nine months later!
At this point I have to give a big, huge, gigantic thank you to all of you who were able to continue to pay your dues despite the dojo not being open for long stretches of time. It’s thanks to you that 510 Judo still exists as a community and a physical location. Also thank you to our landlord at 510 Judo, the Piazza family and AC Goldt Property Management, for extending us a temporary rent reduction in mid-summer.
Just a random no gi picture
Some of you stepped up to the plate and paid for a year membership in advance, which was a huge help. Some of you bought t-shirts and made donations during our t-shirt fundraiser, and one person even paid for a few years of membership in advance(!). All this has allowed us to keep paying our rent, make video lessons on how to practice by yourself at home, offer Zoom classes and outdoor workouts, and lately to offer modified in person classes for our kids.
Despite pandemic closures we were able to fit in some notable black belt promotions. Sensei Mark Harmon was awarded his nidan (second degree) and Sensei Jennifer Pierre-Louis and Sensei Murad Salahi were awarded their shodans (first degree). All well deserved! I’m so happy to be a part of your martial art journeys. It’s an honor to know you and practice with you.
Sensei Mark Harmon (nidan), Sensei Jennifer Pierre Louis (shodan), Sensei Murad Salahi (shodan), Sensei Jonah and Sensei Cody
Near the end of 2019 Sensei Cody Costello came on board with us and began teaching on Saturdays. Sensei Cody is a former junior national champion and got his black belt from Sensei Gordon Makimoto at Vacaville P.A.L. judo club. Sensei Cody has been here through out the 2020 shutdown teaching zoom classes and kid’s classes and it’s been great to have him here sharing his judo knowledge with us.
During the summer we had zoom classes six days a week, twice a day. Once we were able to partially re-open, we continued to live stream our classes so our members could look in and participate from home. In addition, we currently still have two zoom-only classes during the week, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 pm. I would like to give special recognition to Ronan Pfluger and Junn Kim, our online stalwarts. They have been logging for almost every single class since we started the zoom classes in April! During our zoom only classes we work out hard, with dozens and dozens of push ups, sit ups, squats, burpees, solo uchikomi, newaza drills and video analysis.
As of this writing, California is still on a partial lockdown, which prevents us from opening normally. Regardless of how you feel personally about vaccines, I take the FDA approval of a covid-19 vaccine as an encouraging sign. Hopefully soon we will be able to get back to normal.
In the meantime, thank you thank you thank you all for your continued support and participation, at whatever level you feel comfortable. Although memberships are down by about half, we are still here! Once all lockdowns are lifted, we will be able to move from “survive” to “thrive” once more.
As a reminder, kid’s classes are OPEN! Utilizing masks and social distancing, we have gotten good workouts and kept up with our judo skills. If you have two kids from the same household around the same age, then they can practice together.
We’re also having adult classes again. Click here to see the full schedule.
Thanks again, hope to see you on the mats soon!
