News

Judo South Africa is hosting the 2023 Commonwealth Judo Championships from 2^nd to 6^th August. The host town of Port Elizabeth is based on a long stretch of coastline and has an array of white beaches and game reserves including Seaview Lion Park, Settlers Park Nature Reserve and the Island Nature Reserve.

We’d like to share the opportunities available to our members and the process for approval of JudoScotland as the recognised National Federation.

Details of the Championship that will incorporate Veterans, Visual Impaired, Pre-Cadet, Cadet, Junior and Senior categories, can be found here. If you would like to represent Scotland within any of the categories, you must be able to evidence that you meet the required eligibility. It will also be the Judoka’s sole responsibility to cover entry fees and other costs associated with participating in the Commonwealth Judo Championship.

Within the Pre-Cadet, Cadet, Junior and Senior categories, JudoScotland will consider the approval of applications for judoka currently within a JudoScotland or Scottish institute of sport pathway / performance programme. Should there be more notes of interest submitted than places available, a panel consisting of JudoScotland’s CEO, National High Performance Coach and National Talent Development Manager will make a decision based on the suitability.

For Cadet and Junior entrants only, JudoScotland can arrange travel & accommodation (although costs will need to be covered by individuals) and will provide a staff member to accompany the judoka provided there are more than 6 entrants across these categories.

Within Pre-Cadet, Senior, Visual Impaired and Veteran categories, logistics will be the responsibility of the entrant or their parent / guardian. For Pre-Cadet entrants and any Visual Impaired youth judoka, accompanying adult support will be required.

If you are interested in applying, please check that you meet the Championship eligibility criteria and the approval guidance outlined by JudoScotland. Following the above, please submit a note of interest form to JudoScotland by 16^th April 2023.

After this stage, those with approved places will be contacted to supply the relevant information and entry fee to enable JudoScotland to make applications.

Should you have any questions at all, please contact info@judoscotland.com or call 0131 333 2981 to speak to a member of our team.

🥋 World Silver Medallist

🥋 3 x Masters Medallist

🥋 1 x Grand Slam Champion

🥋 7 x Grand Slam Medallist

🥋 6 x Grand Prix Champion

🥋 11 x Grand Prix Medallist

JudoScotland are delighted to welcome world-class Mongolian Judoka Amartuvshin Dashdavaa to run a set of masterclasses for Scottish Judoka! A highly decorated Judoka with World, Grand Slam, Masters and Grand Prix titles throughout his career, he will share his wealth of expertise through a set of masterclasses.

Masterclass East

Venue: JudoScotland NTC

Date: 2nd of April 2023

Time: 2.30 pm – 4 pm

Glasgow Masterclass

Venue: Pro Judo City Venue, 50 West Campbell Street, G2 6QQ

Date: 3rd of April 2023

Time:

Children u12’s: 6-7 pm

Youths & Seniors: 7:30-9 pm

It’s an exciting time for JudoScotland as we launch our new strategic plan for 2023 – 2027, Judo for All.  Our plan reflects the ambitious direction of the organisation and has been developed following an in-depth consultation with our members and stakeholders to encapsulate our collective aims.

The new plan presents a range of fantastic opportunities for the future putting inclusivity at the core of the sport.

JudoScotland CEO Judith McCleary said “We are hugely grateful for all the input we have had and for the support and trust provided by sportscotland who have committed significant funding to help us deliver our Strategic Plan. Our JudoScotland staff team has been working behind the scenes to create Operational Plans that will bring our ‘Judo for All’ strategy to life.

We are committed to offering bespoke club support and you will find an increased number of direct club communications from our team as we offer help & guidance on a range of things including player, coach and volunteer recruitment & retention.

We recognise the need to modernise and as such, we will shortly begin the recruitment of a Digital Communications Officer as we progress our digitalisation services to be more efficient as an organisation and most importantly, to make things simple for our clubs and members.

Over this next period, we will be sharing guidance for clubs on how to implement technical & tactical, behavioural and physical development tools from the JudoScotland Player Development Framework. All of this is with one aim – to support everybody involved in a judoka’s development, whether that be recreational or competitive.

Within our Talent Development programme, you will start to see more physical and behavioural benchmarks being implemented as players are supported to prepare themselves for the Performance programme and as we strive for Scottish athlete success.

We are delighted to have received investment support from sportscotland for a part-time Disability post. We know there is great work already happening across many of our clubs and we want to expand on this and ensure we have appropriate pathway support in place to enable participants with a disability to maximise their potential and make judo their chosen sport for life.

We will also be reviewing our gradings and membership offerings, both of which are big projects but with the aim of ensuring high quality and valuable packages. We will be seeking your feedback so please do take the time to share your views when asked!

We will continue to offer a calendar of events that will include a range of competitions and up-skilling events for our workforce. We have working groups established for a number of our competitions, focussed on providing the best possible experiences for our members.

We couldn’t deliver or achieve our aims without our volunteers, and we will endeavour to provide training and guidance that will contribute to an even better and more diverse workforce to meet the needs of our membership. Within this next year, you will see us launch our Young Leaders programme with our long-term ambition to enable every club in Scotland to have a young leader. This is part of our work to ensure youth voices are heard and positively influencing our direction as a sport. We will be striving to increase our female representation within the sport too; an area where we know we have work to do, but where there are great opportunities.

By 2027, we aim to grow a more diverse membership comprising of over 10,000 individuals. Having an increased membership will enable greater opportunities in the development of the sport including but not limited to bigger pools of judoka to support competitions, national gradings and player development. There is huge potential for the sport and all our goals are aligned to JudoScotland’s vision to be a Scottish Governing Body renowned for excellence, enabling people of all ages and abilities to realise their potential.

Whilst I have only shared a few areas within our Operational Plans, I hope it gives you a flavour of what is ahead. We have a fantastic team of staff and volunteers who are ready and excited for the next chapter as we focus on Judo for All.”

Forbes Dunlop, CEO at sportscotland commented “Judo For All is a clear strategy that will enable people of all ages and abilities to realise their potential within judo. The values of Judo have the inherent ability to not only create better athletes but a better society. I look forward to seeing JudoScotland put this plan into action to deliver a truly inclusive sport.”

The success of the strategy will require collaboration, not only from our key partners sportscotland and British Judo, but the whole Scottish Judo community including the dedicated volunteers, coaches and clubs who make our sport happen.

JudoScotland is saddened to learn of the passing of Jimmy Mcquade, 5th Dan, formerly of the Glasgow Sen-I judo club, on 17th March at the age of 79 years.

Jimmy was a physical and skilful judo player, winning medals at Scottish and area championships over many years. He was a Scottish International and competed at the Dutch open in the 1970s and was part of the first Scottish team, who competed against and trained with in the USA in 1976.

He was a strong supporter of Masters judo and competed at the World Masters Championships in Vienna in 2008, and in Japan at the Kodokan, in Tokyo in 2003.

Jimmy had an interest in Scottish local politics and was elected as a Councillor for Ward 11 (Erskine & Inchinnan) on Renfrewshire Council at the 2012 local government elections.

Jimmy Mcquade will be missed across  Scottish judo circles and we send our best wishes to his wife Simone and all who knew him.

Jimmy Mcquade’s funeral will be held on Monday 3rd April at Dalnotter crematorium, Clydebank at 9.30am.

This International Women’s Day JudoScotland Chief Executive, Judith shares her experience on fitting sport into a busy life:

I am just one of many thousands of working mums who ironically often feel like we’re on the never ending treadmill.

After packing nursery & school bags, dropping children off at childcare and rushing about uploading homework and squeezing in a bit of life admin before work, my thoughts vary from feeling like Superwoman when I arrive at work through to other days when I feel a complete failure at everything (usually when my voice has been raised a little higher than I’d like to admit).

I love my job, in fact I thrive on being in a challenging environment and I just want to influence more people to experience the enjoyment and satisfaction of being involved and developing themself within sport. Sport is so powerful; I’ve gained a heap of life skills and friends through playing a variety of sports throughout my childhood and adulthood.

So as I juggle what feels like a million balls at times, I ask myself why I often now find myself placing sport at the bottom of the priority list. It’s too easy to prioritise an email or two that are awaiting responses, or the cleaning that couldn’t possibly be held off for another day. Perhaps I put too high an expectation on myself……I know I do, and I am just one of thousands of others in the same boat, doing the same. Women in our society still carry the majority of caring responsibilities. This isn’t just in relation to children, but also in relation to caring for parents, neighbours and friends. This enormous responsibility comes at the risk of neglecting care for oneself.

The sport I am involved most with is curling and the late shift game from 9-11pm can sometimes be a real dread to get out the door for, especially on a dark, rainy winter’s night. But when I step on the ice, I almost instantly feel like ‘me’ and focus entirely on the game in hand, switching off to other tasks and problems. By the time it’s finished, I often feel ready to take on the world again.

As a wise person once told me, if you want to look after others to the best of your ability, you must first look after yourself. Being active / involved in sport isn’t selfish, it’s critical for our wellbeing, both mentally and physically. The power of sport cannot be underestimated.

So on this International Women’s Day, I urge you all to make a commitment to be active yourself and to pay particular care to the women around you and offer them support to ensure they get that critical time they need to prioritise activity.

A Brief update from the Chair of some key events and recent news from February:

Hi Judo Community,

This month’s Report from the Chair is slightly different to the norm.  I’d like to focus a bit more on where we are in JudoScotland and to ask for your support.

We’re just about to start a big piece of work to refresh and improve our current grading system.  And we’ll shortly be approaching member clubs to get your views.  With this in mind, and as a bit of pre-work, can I ask all our clubs to review your membership and ensure that they’re all JudoScotland members so that we have an accurate picture of numbers.  As part of our strategy, we’ve set targets to increase our membership over the next 4 years.  We know there are many benefits to membership but critically everyone doing judo in Scotland needs to be insured. In fact, a club has had this tested recently.

Can I also ask you to look at our grading rebate incentive where clubs are rewarded for doing a 3^rd grading in the year.

If we can push our membership and grading capacities up, we will not only be rewarding learning and achievement but will be generating additional income that can be reinvested from grassroots right through to high performance.  And that benefits all of us as a community.   We’ve always had great support from all of clubs – and long may that last!

As part of the gradings review, we’ve revised the previous Job Description for the Area Director of Examiners.  The role is now called the JudoScotland Director of Examiners and will work in conjunction with the Business Delivery Team to focus on Dan Grades and the recruitment and training of Senior Examiners. The position was promoted to the wider community, and after a series of interviews, I’m delighted to announce that Rick Kenney was successful in securing the role.  Congratulations Rick and we look forward to working closely with you to enhance our Dan Grades.

One area that we’ve always struggled with in JudoScotland is attracting Independent Directors.  We now have Jodie who joined the Board last year with her legal background and who has been a great asset.  We recently went out to recruit two more Independent Directors and were delighted when 5 strong candidates came forward. I’ll give you more info in my next report as the appointments will be ratified at the next Board Meeting on 7th March.

Incidentally, it was interesting during the interviews that all the candidates indicated they’d come forward because they’d heard exciting things about our organisation. -music to our ears!

My tenure finishes in 3 years and 8 months – let’s work together to make this an exceptionally productive and exciting period for the judo community.

Thanks

Marc