Another year goes by where we are unable to welcome families, athletes, referees, coaches and educators to our annual Judo Festival in Porec, however the EJU Education department and streaming team have worked tirelessly to ensure that no one has missed out on the content they would have received. A huge thank you to all those that hosted seminars and of course that participated in the conversation and classes.
Vice President of the European Judo Union, Jane Bridge, who is responsible for education was pleased with the online format this year but is certainly hoping for a return to Croatia.
This was the second and hopefully the last online festival since the pandemic began. We wanted to remind our judoka of all the activities that we usually share during the festival in Porec. So each activity online was made to give them a glimpse of the activities and experts that we can all meet in Porec next year. Of course within our sessions (online or on the mat), the aim is also to continue to inspire and influence judoka and their coaches and families and to show them that there are so many facets to judo of which everybody has their place and by this embodying the EJU slogan “judo more than sport”.
With judo having so much more to offer than simply performance sport, we are very fortunate to be able to conduct such activities online or in person. We celebrate each branch of judo, whether is it sport or education, but this festival gives everyone the opportunity to learn and explore the possibilities. Today we saw Mikihiro Mukai take a class in order to help teach kata to children for example or for the first time we hosted a round table seminar to discuss gender equality in the sport and we returned to discuss training for special needs judoka.
Even if you missed these live sessions, they are still available on our YouTube channel and the full playlist is below.
We hope you enjoy these snippets of education but more importantly we hope it will encourage you and your families to join us in the future in our incredible Judo Festival.
Author: Thea Cowen