On Saturday, August 3rd, 510 Judo hosted the 2nd Bay Area Judo Championships (2024) at Pinole Valley High School. A judo tournament is a big production and requires the participation and efforts of many many people to make it work. Thank you, in no particular order, to:
- Our unofficial co-host Vallejo Judo, Sensei Armando, Sensei Frankie, and Sensei Acazah. It wouldn’t have been possible without you!
- Our referee crew, including our chief referee Glenn Koyama of San Gabriel Judo. Thank you as well in particular to David Williams, Ralph Palmer, Dina Mani, and Minobu Shibuya.
- All the fighters and coaches from all the clubs who came from near and far to show their judo and participate in the shiai.
- All our wonderful volunteers from all the clubs around the area, including Nakano Judo, Griffin Judo, San Francisco Judo Institute, and more.
- Sensei Anthony Lau from Hollywood Judo, who flew up just to help out at the tournament. Sensei Anthony is also the co-host of the excellent judo podcast Tatami Talk – please subscribe to their YouTube channel and listen the their podcast on any podcast platform.
- Our 510 Judo volunteer crew, starting with Eileen, our volunteer coordinator. I had no idea what an important job that was going to be!!
- Sensei Nico and his wife Rebecca for manning the awards table in the morning.
- Sensei Jay for manning the awards table in the afternoon.
- Coach Angelo, just back from the U.S. Open in Florida, for all the help with set up, breakdown, coaching, and doing everything that needed doing.
- Sebastian for his invaluable help finishing up the brackets and getting them published the night before.
- Kevin and that Australian fella JT for technical assistance with the livestream as well as scoring and timekeeping.
- Tristan, David, and so many others who filled in wherever it was necessary.
I’m sure I missed somebody, and for that I am truly sorry. Please know that your efforts are very much appreciated!
Additional information about the tournament:
We experimented with a PPV livestream for this tournament, offered directly through Smoothcomp. We ran into some technical issues, mostly our fault. Our intention was to capture every single match in glorious HD, with every single match getting its own file, and clickable links from the bracket page. However due to unforeseen issues, there are no matches from Mat 4. Mat 1 has a few hours of matches, but there was an issue with graphics popping up and covering the entire screen during the match, making it nearly unwatchable.
However, if your judoka was on mat 2 or mat 3, during the first few hours of the tournament, there is a good chance that we got their matches. Please click here and find your judoka’s name, then click “Watch.” You will be taken to a video player and will have the opportunity to buy a replay of the livestream for $10 (the minimum amount allowed by Smoothcomp). Please note, the $10 enables you to watch all the matches from the whole tournament.
We also had a professional photographer, Rex Mananquil, come and take still photos of the event. A few of them are here on this blog post. In my opinion, they came out great! Click here to take a look – the password is 510Judo-080324. There are over 750 high definition action photos! From that site you can buy non-watermarked digital files for a few bucks each, or you can order prints. Please note all revenue from that site goes directly to Rex, not to us as the tournament organizers.
Also, don’t forget to follow the official instagram account @bayareajudochampionships for more photos. Feel free to tag or mention us if you have photos or video you’d like to share.
Finally, if you’re someone who is interested in taking up judo, come practice with us! We are conveniently located in San Leandro, California, just off the 580 freeway, in between Oakland, Hayward and Castro Valley.
