Vice-President of the Slovenian Judo Federation and Sport Director of the European Judo Union, Urska Zolnir Jugovar, took up a first-time role as the chief organiser of both, the European Judo Championships Veterans 2023 and the European Judo Championships Kata 2023. Following a rather robust regime in past months, she looks back to share her inaugurate experience;
First and foremost, I want to express my appreciation to Kata Commissioners of the Slovenian Judo Federation, Igor Albreht, Robert Kojc, Tomo Mihaljevič and their team, with whom I have been working to organise next week’s Kata Europeans. We hope all will go well. As per this week, I really appreciate the support we had from Borut Morosek and Ruslan Yankowsky as together with members of their Judo Club Acron Slovenj Gradec, they volunteered their time day and night to ensure that this event runs effortlessly.
This is the first time for us organising the veteran Europeans and this event is not something I was familiar with, therefore some part of it was hard at the time. Despite this being one of many judo event, it is different, because for example unlike at any other events, here we have accreditation every day, for which we needed to make sure we have enough people accounted.
We did a great job as a team. There are still small details I would have wanted to do better but they are really small details which is only not easy to overlook when you are being a perfectionist.
The biggest challenge throughout the process was certainly to coordinate around my own job, my family, this European Championships, and my duties within the European Judo Union.
Overall, it was a new experience which is almost behind us, and we are looking for the next adventure. I certainly grown throughout this experience, and I learned new skills such as management and detailed planning.
We are really pleased that all the feedbacks we received are positive. These two events are all about family atmosphere and we understand that these judoka came here with their friends and family to enjoy their time on and off the mat. Hence, our goal is ultimately to ensure that all our visitors are relaxed and having a pleasant time and we are happy we were able to achieve that.
Author: Szandra Szogedi