A team of young athletes from Creston Judo Club will be competing at the BC Winter Games next year.
The games were cancelled for 2022 due to the pandemic, so the rescheduled event will take place in March 2023.
“There’s a lot of excitement,” said Laura Knudsen, head sensei for the Creston Judo Club.
“There was so much disappointment last year. We all shed a few tears when we heard the news that it was cancelled.”
There are seven qualifying judokas from the Creston Judo Club. To complete a full team roster, the remaining spots for the BC Winter Games will be filled with participants from the Fernie and Invermere clubs.
The team will see competition at four events prior to the games. The first training camp will take place in Vernon through Judo BC at the end of September, with training from a gold medalist head coach from France.
Another training camp will be held in November, exclusive to the Kootenays. From there, the team will travel to Abbotsford for the first international tournament.
“They’ll all have some exposure to what competition feels like because it’s been both two years since we’ve had any,” said Knudsen. “We have a list of things to work towards - strength, flexibility, conditioning - things like that.”
Knudsen said she lives vicariously through her students and feels the same jitters before competition that they do.
“We cheer for each other, even though we compete against each other,” she said. “We do like to say that there isn’t any losers. There’s learners, so with every loss comes a lesson. You’re more than likely going to see the same competitors in your same categories over and over again. So we focus on how we can get better the next time.”
Because travel to most competitions is required, the Creston Judo Club relies on generous community support.
Creston and District Credit Union recently provided a donation of $1,000 in September.
“The Credit Union completely surprised us with their generous donation of corporate sponsorship, and it just makes it so much easier for these kids to really attend events,” said Knudsen.
Other community supporters of Creston Judo Club include Mayday Electric, Creston Valley Funeral Services, The Wee Grill, Kokanee Ford, Notary Creston,The Mallory, J.H. Huscroft, and Grant Campbell.
For more information on Creston Judo Club, visit crestonjudo.club.
