Judo Club Osaka held their first “Obi Tournament” at the weekend. This was a internal competition for up to 50 competitors, and was great fun. It was using the Obi Tournament system, which is where each competitor gains points over time, which contribute to their little Obi figure gaining different coloured belts.
I was technically Referee In Charge, but no problems arose, and none were expected given the very positive atmosphere that this club generates in general, let alone at events.
It’s always interesting refereeing when the only referee on the mat, as there are no corner judges to fall back on! Hence it can be considered a form of mental sharpening training. It helped that the scoreboard operator was absolutely spot-on with pretty much every single call though.
The scoreboard software in use was Score-Judo, which was very impressive. It is free, runs on any laptop, and you can rig up an external monitor to face the crowd! Throw in a larger LCD monitor or TV and you have something suitable for larger competitions as well. A much better option than spending huge amounts of money on the manual scoreboards. Especially since the laptop software is much easier to update when the rules change! And as Koka is vanishing from January…
Anyway, my target is still to go for National C soon.
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