Judo's failure

If you ever want to discourage a community, all you need is a few of the rules changed, and then allow resentment to play out, all of which goes directly against the philosophy of judo.  Without community dojos co-existing, where can “mutual benefit” be found?

In a relatively small region, such as the one I’ve practiced in over the last 30some years, I’ve seen it lead by very humble hard workers who’s only objective was to see judo flourish in the area.

We use to have 4-6 tournaments every year right in the regional area. Typically speaking, it was always the same very small crowd of volunteers doing the work, usually by the same dojos. Now, we’re lucky if we even get one tournament a year.

It started with a few rule changes, like mat sizes for safety, and then someone else leading the way getting injured, and before you know it, no one wants to jump in, or make some changes to line it all up again.

Over the last three years, I’ve had to personally drive 3-4 of my own students to tournaments 4-5 hours away every month because my own region has no motivation to do anything about it.

The last tournament we had locally was well attended, however, many people involved felt a need to give too much criticism about how it was run, rather than praise and gratitude, which only incited resentment and loss of any interest in repeating another local tournament.

So, how do we break the cycle and keep the competitions active? It starts with the co-operation of all the dojos, and the removal of egotism from it. How do we move forward if all that is talked about are the complaints of the past. We get over it, and simply move on.

Judo will never fail from those on the outside of it. Judo’s failure to the community will only come from within it.