It may well be said that the primary objective of Judo is the perfection of character. ~H. Seichiro OkazakiThis weekend we took Jonathan and Teila to the Idaho State Judo Tournament. I am not sure that I can correctly recap the days events but here is a list to give you an idea....
*Weigh-In Table Confusion
*BAD brackets
*Lack of Organization
*Chaos
The list can go on but aside from the pictures, I want to tell you about one event that both summed up the whole day!! We knew from Ronie watching at the score table that Jonathan placed 4th. Now we have been wrong in the past but this time we were pretty sure and Jonathan knew as well. However, when it came to the awards ceremony, they called the other little boy for 3rd but grabbed Jonathan and put him on the stand. The pictures were taken, things were done and then the other little boy comes up and wants his medal. He had every right-I am not arguing that point but these two boys were now caught in the confusion and chaos. They took Jonathan off the podium, pulled of the medal (Again, it wasn't his,he didn't earn it, we weren't going to keep it but in front of all of those people......!) and put it on the other little boy. Jonathan stood in confusion but walked up, bowed to the three winners, shook their hand and walked back to us. Ronie rushed him to the locker room to try and help the train wreck that we knew was going to happen! For goodness sakes, you should have seen me let alone a 9 year old little boy!!
Well, a Sensei walks up and asks if he can chat with Jonathan and told me how impressed he was by him and his sportsmanship. Of Course he could!!! Silly man! So Jonathan comes out and the Sensei tells him who he was, how he watched Jonathan and was so proud of how he handled the situation and how he had brought medals for his team to give for various reasons but he wanted Jonathan to have the one for sportsmanship! Oh my! The best speech I have ever heard! Thank you Sensei! You helped a little boy through a hard situation but also helped build some character in everyone that watched and listened to you! It made me want to sign up for Judo!! Anyone else game?!??!?! p style="visibility:visible;">
2 comments:
You busy woman you! all of these posts at the same time (not to mention the kinder blog you updated) Those were some neat pics of the Judo match! What a pretty impressive little young man you have! I love to hear that there are still people out there that don't rip a person's head off for something that happened in a sport that they didn't think was right! What an example you handsome boy was! Thanks for sharing!
I agree because sports can build character or destroy character and there are too many that let it destroy them. I am so proud of you Jonathan and you are an example of what God wants us to be in a world that mostly doesn't live that way. You are awesome!
Love ya
Grandma Terry
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