Dave and Anne Williams were at the Thursday night class on October 10.
Click below for the full-size photos. I like these because I'm not sure I've ever seen Dave, Andy, and Jeff on the mat at the same time.
The Hudson Promotionals were last Saturday.
For this tournament they adopted the new IJF rules for refereeing. There was one referee on the mat and no corner refs. They installed two cameras in the corners and there were at least two (maybe more) judges sitting in front of video screens who reviewed close calls.
Here are 1261 photos (click below):
The above link opens a web page that will load up with hundreds of thumbnails. I recommend giving them a while to load completely, and then you can scroll through them very smoothly. If that overwhelms your browser, try this link, which displays the same photos but is much easier on your browser.
Here's video of the action on Mat 1:
The action on Mat 2:
The action on Mat 3:
Seems like only yesterday I was waxing nostalgic about Sensei Dave Williams while at the same time believing in my heart he'd be teaching Tuesdays and Thursdays forever.
The fact is, there is no "forever". Dave and Anne are moving to Florida, and tonight — in just a few minutes — Dave will be teaching his last class at Oishi. I'll be there, sorely regretting that I didn't come more when I could.
On July 11 Sensei Andy hosted a farewell party. Here's a Flickr set with some photos. If you're on Facebook, Thomi Lee posted some there as well.
Please join me in wishing Dave and Anne the very best. Maybe take a moment to "look for Marius's friends" tonight. (If you've ever been a Tuesday/Thursday regular, you'll know what that means.) And remember, "Bikini weather's coming."
[UPDATE: Yotam posted some excellent photos as well. See the link in his comment below.]
There's a new Flickr photo set with 486 photos from the promotionals on May 4. Click any of the thumbnails below to see the whole photo set.
And here are videos, one for each division. Each video contains all the matches in that division, except for the masters video, which contains most of the masters matches.
Sankyu:
Nikyu:
Ikkyu:
Masters:
Some of you know Robert Siegel from back in the day. Robert started judo as a kid and had already amassed a collection of trophies and medals when I met him in the late 70's, when we were both teens.
Robert and his family were in town for Thanksgiving. I had lunch with him on Wednesday and it occurred to me we could take a walk to the dojo and surprise Sensei and Barbara, whom he hadn't seen in almost 30 years. It was a great reunion, and wouldn't you know, Sensei surprised us. He rummaged in a closet for a minute and produced Robert's nidan certificate from the Kodokan, dated Jan. 13, 1992 and in perfect condition.
Robert's wife and kids came by and Sensei made everybody take an ukemi lesson. Robert practiced some throws on me, to the delight of his kids. After all these years he still had the muscle memory. It was like old times, getting smashed by that tai-otoshi.
I hope we'll have more of these visits in the years to come.
(If the above video doesn't work for you, try this direct link to the page on Vimeo.)
Mike "Scientist" Heller took these great photos the other night. I wish I could have been there!
Everyone from Oishi Judo passed their promotion tests yesterday:
Matt Crane was on hand as an alternate uke and Paul Virtue provided moral support.
Congratulations to all! Group photos and two video clips below.
It was great to see Germain as a shodan.
Sensei drew these feet on the bottom of a mat for the kids to practice footwork with.
On a vaguely related note, I've added photos of Sensei's artwork to the dojo web site. See the links on the left-hand side.