scholastics 2013

Where is all the discussion of the Scholastics this year. We saw alot of unecessary officiating and was wondering if anyone else saw this too or was it just me. Also what were your thoughts on the venue?

I was there. I attended the referees and coaches meetings. Just thinking about what I saw at the tournament, I thought the referees were looking to penalize players and felt the refs thought their main responsibility was to intervene in matches so there was no time that the matches were tied. Thinking about what was said at the referees meeting, I'm not surprised. I realize we need referees to run the matches but I wish we had more referees that actually understood judo.

What was the impact of the use of the new rules? More ippon wins? More wins by penalties?
btw - How many "mats" were running?

As with most events there are always valuable lessons learned, opportunities for efficiencies and you have to be prepared to take the good with the not so good…
Yes - the venue only allowed for three mats, and many of us were worried that the event would run longer than necessary as a result.
Day 1 had the larger number of competitors and ran until 7pm with three sessions… The first two sessions ran about 4 hours each and the last session was about 3 hours…
Day 2 with Bantam and IJF seemed to go by much faster, and the final session wrapped up much earlier than day 1 – I believe it was at least a couple hours sooner…
-The upside to running the event at a High School (rather than a convention center) is an obvious cost savings for USA Judo – hopefully that savings will benefit the athletes.
-Think it is a good idea to continue to use a High School for this ‘scholastic’ event; albeit the lesson learned is to find a school that can accommodate at least four to six mats…
-Missed Opportunity: the absence of on-sight concessions seemed to be a huge missed opportunity for additional fund raising from potential concession sales… All the volunteers should be commended; suspect that more volunteers (HS Athletics) would have come-out if offered the opportunity to split concession sales with USA Judo…
New Rules: have come to appreciate that our referees are only human, and that the constant changing of the rules are no fault of their own. This being the first event for implementation across the US, we have to appreciate some growing pains.
- Yes there were some inconsistencies in ‘interpretation’ especially for those rules that are reliant upon the referees to judge ‘athlete intentions.’
- Saw plenty of shidos called during grip fighting; which is unfortunate as I do not believe that was the spirit and intent of the new rules… The additional shidos in these particular matches did not necessarily result in Ippons miraculously appearing…
- Saw at least one incident where a shido was called for catching the sleeve with two hands prior to a grip actually being established…
- Saw shidos decide the outcome of numerous finals and semi-finals matches; rather than offensive scores…
- Saw more matches decided by ippon in newaza while out of bounds…
- Saw no shido called for false-attack (intention) when an eventual winner was able to protect their small lead of one shido as time expired with consecutive hurried attempts at tomenage…
- Saw extended overtime matches ultimately decided by shido; a seemingly less transparent Hantai with an air of more subjectivity in the eyes of the losing coach/athlete…
- Saw a couple none-Ippon calls in favor of wazari; suspect some confusion/apprehension over what is meant by "landing largley on the back"...
- At the same time, the referees held true to their calling of hansokomake for even subtle secondary leg grabs – at least three coming from kouchi-gari attacks where tori’s muscle memory instinctively touches the leg with their arm as they proceed to take their attack to the mat…
- Remarkably, even with the benefit of video review, several jury decisions came without unanimous agreement by the judges. Video seemed to serve more so as a training aid for the benefit of referees to re-review and discuss amongst themselves even after decisions for complex scenarios were already delivered.
Although I find it hard to fault the referees given this was the first time the new rules have been implemented; it is unfortunate for these young athletes that the opportunity for making a cadet or junior world team coincided on this seemingly opening day experiment…
Recommendations:
- Make sure all finals matches, especially those with a cadet/junior world team on-the-line, include at least one senior level referee on the mat.
- To help avoid dead-time for required athlete rest time between back to back consolation-semi/final and finals matches consider combining more round robin divisions onto the same mat and session, especially with the larger bracketed Juv-B and IJF divisions that are more likely to encounter this required rest-time with so much on-the-line…

Thanks for sharing your observations.
It will be interesting to see the new rules in action at Senior Nationals Apr 13-14

This is disheartening. Judging from the poor referee standard from last year's Senior Nationals, I have even less
hope for this one with the new rules. Regrettably athletes spend a lot of money to compete and train with a professional
attitude have to deal with this amateur level refereeing.

I want to point out, after speaking to several IJF referee at a recent big European tournament, when one does a ko-uchi-makikomi
with two hands on one sleeve, and one arm (elbow) touches the opponent's leg while executing the throw, it is allowed as long
as both hands remain on the sleeve. The same applies to sode-tsuri-komi-goshi. If a referee disqualifies a player for this, the player
must protest because the referee is being incompetent.

Recalled another observation: during a true double elimination format, where the two finalist were figting their 2nd of 3 matches the fighter with the more offensive scores ended up losing by Honsokomake with forth shido coming in final three-four seconds... While protecting his lead, having received his third shido with 9-10 seconds left; his mistake was when the referee called hajime with 4 seconds left - his first step was backwards - resulting in his 4th shido with 2-3 seconds on the clock...
The obvious behavioral teaching point the referees are sending with this call is that they are strtictly looking for mutual activity and they are going to be quick to penalize their perception of athletes 'intention' to avoid activity...