Penn Sports Plus: Judo Edition

We’re excited to bring to you Penn Sports Plus, a new Buzz feature that spotlights people in the Penn Sports scene who don’t usually get much attention. No current Penn athletics players or coaches will be featured in Penn Sports Plus, so we’ll have plenty of space for the unsung athletes and athletic workers at Penn.

This week, we feature the Penn Judo Club, with sophomore president Harry Robinson taking us down to the mat.

How did you get the Judo Club back up and running on campus?

Robinson: Well, the first thing I did was hold elections, which was interesting because I was the only member of the club at the beginning of the year. So for a while I was the official President, Vice-President, Secretary, and Treasurer of the club, which was pretty interesting. The first thing I had to do was find someone who was actually willing to teach, I'm not skilled enough to actually instruct, so I talked to my Sensei from where I used to do Judo in Bryn Mawr, P.A., he got someone he knew who was teaching at Drexel Judo Club to come to Penn a couple of days a week to teach us... after that it was just a matter of finding people to show up.

So how did you get people to actually sign up and join the club?

Robinson: So mostly I just bothered people around me to show up to judo and see how much fun it was. We had about a 50% retention rate, so half the people who showed up to the first practice wouldn't show up again. But that meant that half the people I managed to pester into going once would actually stay. So I got, six people, seven people, that way, and they got some friends to show up, and by the middle of the first semester, we had a solid dozen, fifteen people at every practice.

What were competitions like last year?

Robinson: No one else really had that much experience, so we'd go to competitions, and mostly it'd be just a learning curve for people who hadn't done matches before. It's pretty different between practice and matches, and just getting the feel for it, it's great experience. So for the most part, I'd win some matches, the other black belt would win some matches, and no one else would win. At least at first. It started changing after a while. Especially people with wrestling experience, jiu-jitsu experience. They learned a lot faster.

What's the outlook of the club for this year?

Robinson: This year, we've had a lot more trouble getting practices going. We used to have practice in Hutchinson, where we had all the space we wanted at any time. They closed it for renovations, and we got kicked out because of the asbestos, so now we're kind of in Pottruck. You know, we don't have much space, but we can expand some more once we have some more attendance.