Interview with USJA President Gary Goltz (Part 1 of 2)

When USJA President Gary Goltz paid us a visit, he agreed to an interview for the blog.  He's been really awesome, as I have had a ton of questions for him over the course of several phone calls.  I've been working on transcribing this interview in my weekly 30 minutes of free time, and it is taking a while, so I figured I would go ahead and post what I have (as it has some pretty good stuff to digest), and then I'll post the next part when I wrap it up.  Enjoy!  (Editor's note - there were some revisions added after the initial posting, as Gary wanted to add a bit more detail to some areas.  And you can find part 2 here.)

CM: Let me start with an easy one: What does the USJA do, exactly? What happens to my $45/year? I know about the insurance, but what else?
GG: We are a national accreditation body that provides sanctions as well as insurance for events. The insurance cost is around $20+ and is definitely the largest part of the $45, the remainder of the money goes towards overhead; we have an office, and executive director, a full time staff, equipment, postage, taxes, a website, and a database that we need to maintain, and lots of phones!  So in short, every penny of that $45 goes towards running the USJA.

CM: And here is another one: other than touring the country teaching fantastic clinics, what does a USJA president do? What are your responsibilities/duties/superpowers?
GG:   First and foremost, I’m a member of the board of directors - as such; it's my responsibility to promote the goals and mission of the USJA. Beyond that, a big part of the president's job as I see it is public relations. Having come into the position after being the Chief Operating Officer for 4 years, I had a lot of knowledge of what our operation entails. In addition I'm pretty much the untitled Chief Fundraising Officer, working to bring in new donors and nurturing our existing donors as well. By the way did I mention that when I went from COO to President my salary was doubled!  All kidding aside my approach towards leadership in the USJA is based on this credo -

• Honorably serving our members with communication founded on reality based information, positive, productive and ethical thinking
• Following judo’s core principles of maximum efficiency with minimum effort and mutual welfare and benefit with the goal of developing good character
• Remembering the spirit of our founders; Jim Bregman, the late George Harris, Karl Geis, and others in terms of the high standards they strived for

 
CM: Can you tell me more about the fundraising? Who are the big donors, and where does this money go?
GG:  We have companies like GTMA, Judo Unlimited, and Black Belt Magazine where the USJA gets some revenue. We have member donors like Andy Connelly our club leader in Texas who gives a donation of $100 every month on his Visa card, Dr. James Lally who is a board member has been our donor of the year for over 5 years, and there are countless others. Every donation helps defray our membership fees.
CM: I'm sure that's a big help to the organization...
GG: If we just went off of the $45, we wouldn't have enough money to run. We haven't had a price increase in years; that's where the donations come into play.

CM: Looking at this post, can you tell me what where you come out on some of the issues raised?

Technology Resources:

GG: Our Coaches Portal was the result of a complete make over of our entire database. It is now interactive so our club leaders can look up promotion information and membership expirations online.

Help for Fledgling Clubs:

GG: Beyond providing liability insurance for clubs, through our supplier partnerships our clubs can receive discounts on tatamis and gis. Another thing we've done do for our members is instituted background screening not only for coaches but for all black belts. And we’re in the process of developing a marketing manual for USJA clubs. As for your Mat Co-op Exchange idea, you're not the first person to think of that. We could definitely do something along those lines. We just need someone to take the initiative and get it going. We are always looking for volunteers.

Help to Start Tournaments:

GG: We offer sanctions for $25 and have a referee as well as a technical officials committee to help support tournaments. Our IT (volunteer) Director, John Moe developed a free Scoreboard Program for running matches. We use this at the Winter Nationals and all my club’s events.  It’s excellent, easy to use, and always up to date.   

Setting Promotion Standards:

GG: The USJA promotion system has always been one of our selling points. We're more up-front with what you have to do and more objective. If somebody meets those criteria, it's generally a done deal. Along the same lines, we try to keep our standards current. We're in the process of updating them as we speak. Sid Kelly, the creator Kelly's Capers and head of our promotion board, has revised our senior promotion system. I've had a chance to go through it and it looks a lot like the modern approaches taken by countries where judo is really proliferating. Hal Sharp, who wrote The Sport of Judo and many other books, is doing the same with our junior promotion system and junior manual. Our goal is to have these rolled out by the 1st quarter of 2012. It's been a big undertaking and those guys are doing a great job.

Term Limits for Any Positions of Influence:

GG: The USJA board adopted them a few years ago. I was one of the people who raised this as an issue. Now board members can only serve two terms then they have to sit out for 2 terms before they can run again. The terms are four years. This is my first term as president, so I would be eligible to come back and serve again then I'd have to bow out. You know we have a quality team of board members and Katrina Davis is an outstanding Executive Director with 20 years’ experience. They are intelligent and have common sense. While there will always be some disagreements, every one of them is committed to the USJA and making good decisions

Spreading Knowledge:

GG: Our online magazine, Growing Judo is one of the greatest support arms to the membership.  Joan Love our Vice President, who is its editor, puts her heart and soul into each issue. I've seen the publications that the USJA has put out for the last 40 years, as well as the ones from other national and even international organizations and can say that "Growing Judo" is among the best judo publications ever. We cover the entire geography of the USJA. There's a section on new clubs, promotions, human interest stories, articles on how to grow your club, etc.  Among the clinics we offer are coach certification, referee certification, kata certification, Kelly’s Capers, and just about anything you want to learn we try to find someone within a stone's throw of our clubs who could come in and teach.

OK, so that's our ballgame for part one. I hope you enjoyed it, and stay tuned for part 2...  It gets even better!

So How Would I Run a Tournament?

Alright... so if the IJF rules are awful, what does a good tournament look like? 

In a recent post I pondered what the underlying principles should be as I seek to create a tournament...  The very brief summary is that tournaments should foster:

• Self-improvement
• Self-assessment (per Gerry Lafon's comment)
• Innovation within the Art
• A sense of community within the Art
• Publicity - that is, a connection with the non-Judo public
• The core principles of Judo

So, using that as a touchstone, here is what I came up with:

Lose the Japanese:  Let's start with what I imagine will be the most controversial.  As we want to use the tournament to help publicize the sport, we should not use a foreign language to narrate the competition. Ippon is the only thing I think we should keep in Japanese; it's part of the Judo brand, and, in any case, it will be pretty clear to the non-savvy onlooker what just happened (if not why it happened).  We should even replace "Hajime" and "Matte" with "Go" and "Stop".  It doesn't change a tiny bit about the competition itself, which is, after all, the main thing.  And I'm just talking about tournaments, here.  Feel free to keep the Japanese in classes.

Have a Flyer: Not at all controversial, but sticking with the publicity/community outreach thing, tournament hosts should create a 1-page flyer that goes briefly over the rules, how to win, how the tournament is structured (e.g., double elimination, round robin, etc), perhaps which divisions are on which mats, and some basic info about what Judo is.  And of course, don't forget to tell mention when and where they can find a dojo.  Make the flyer succinct and interesting.  Catchy, in other words.

No Harm, No Foul:  If it isn't unsafe, and it doesn't clearly oppose the spirit of Judo (which is a nebulous thing, I understand), keep it legal.  Weird grips?  No harm -  legal.  Head-diving?  Much greater risk of neck injury - illegal.  Leg picks and other things that involve grabbing pants/legs?  It's embarrassing that I even have to ask - legal. 

Bring Back Dakiage - Sort of: Dakiage, if you aren't familiar, is basically "the slam."  Quinton "Rampage" Jackson used to be famous for this, as seen here (@ around 40 seconds in):   Now, obviously slamming isn't safe - there are no good breakfalls from that, and after your head hits the mat, it will often bounce into the slammer's head for a guaranteed KO.  But one of the old rules went something like "if you can get them up to shoulder level with control, you win."  I like this rule.  They got rid of it, and now have a rule where if you can make the guy on bottom break contact with the mat, then you both have to start back on your feet. The rule isn't completely useless, but does lead to silly behaviors like "escaping" an arm-bar by lifting your opponent a centimeter off the mat. So, here's what I think: 1) If you can't get your opponent higher than your knee, the action continues, because it is hard to do a ton of damage to someone from that height (I think). 2) If you can get your opponent up to shoulder height in one decisive movement (with control), you win. Because they are basically pwned at that point (for my older readers: "pwned" in this case = finished). 3) If you get past the knee, but not to the shoulder (in ONE DECISIVE MOVEMENT), you just start back from standing. Reasoning is there is a risk of being spiked on your head, but it isn't guaranteed doom like shoulder height would be. And most importantly, 4) If you actually slam or spike your opponent - even if by accident, you are thrown out. This is to encourage control. By making this change, we would a) bring back a great technique that is super-duper useful, b) eliminate some more of the garbage, by-product behaviors like exposing yourself to an arm bar in order to stand your opponent back up, and c) possibly improve the quality of people's guard

Use Points:  So here's another controversial one.  I don't have a huge issue with the Waza-ari and Yuko frameworks (or, in my no-Japanese version, "Big Score" and "Minor Score"), but I also don't think that it really adds that much to a judo competition.  And people intuitively understand points.  So, if it isn't adding that much, and a change will make it easier to grasp, why not?  Now, I'm honestly not completely sold on the idea myself...  I need to sleep on it I guess.  Maybe we can have "Big Points" and "Minor Points"?  It still preserves the quality over quantity principle, but is spelled out more clearly for the lay-audience.

Deflate the Referees:  Too often, Judo referees remind me of that stereotypical neighborhood association guy that just lives to fine you for your grass being .02 inches higher than regulation.  They don't so much care that you are a good neighbor, they just live to punish and show their knowledge of the rules.  Honestly, I'll bet a lot of Judo referees *are* that neighborhood association guy or gal.  It's not about the ref, it's about the Judo, so I really like the approach of Freestyle Judo (and most other contact sports), where the ref will give instructions, then warnings... then penalties, unless something is just atrocious. 

Work to Pair Up Comparable Ranks:  I recognize that this isn't always possible, especially in smaller tourneys or with certain weight classes, but if we accept that self assessment is one of the things we want our tournament to promote, we shouldn't just have our white belt face off against two sandans before going home for the day.  There are a few things you could do to help this, for instance... 

Get Rid of Pre-Defined Weight Classes:  I don't have anything against grouping people of similar weight, but the current system has at least two bad by-products.  1) The guy that weighs X pounds may have only 2 other guys in his division, while the guy who is 5 pounds heavier is squaring off against 20 folks, and 2) It encourages cutting weight, which is at best not healthy, and at worst bad for you or even lethal.  So that guy who is X+ 5 pounds ends up fighting folks who walk around at X+20 lbs.  So just group people by weight and/or skill level, putting the cut-offs where ever is necessary to create the most balanced/fair divisions.  And the balance you place between skill level and size may vary - you could even get rid of weight classes altogether!  Now, it may be that having no defined weight classes could actually cause worse weight-cutting, and if we find that this is the case, then go back to the old way.  But we can help prevent that by ...

All Weigh-Ins on the Day of the Tourney:  The purpose is to discourage weight cutting, which is not a judo skill, and to get rid of the home-field advantage for the local club who can cut more weight than the out-of-towners.

Get People as Many Matches as Practical:  You come to a judo tournament to compete against others, and it really sucks to pay $40 to spend 20 total seconds on the mat against two vastly superior opponents. "OK - then get better" I can hear you thinking.  Fair enough, but let's let the guy or gal get some more matches in.  One tourney I liked (in Lafayette, LA?) had 2 pools of 5 people each in my weight class.  The pools would play round-robin style, then the top 2 from each pool competed in double-elimination.  It was fun.  A German beat me for 1st (GERMANS!), but it was a lot of fun judo.  Don't have time for that?  You can always just set up "funsies" matches between two folks that want to compete.  Just do something.  Find a way to help your competitors get more competition.

Lastly, Invite Everyone to Dinner: You don't have to pay - just invite people.  Make them feel welcome.  Get to know these folks.  You have to eat, right?  And heck, maybe you can cut a deal with the local Sizzler to cut you a deal on the price if you can bring them 30 hungry customers?  Or maybe if you can get RSVPs, you can cater it, to help folks get back on the road more quickly... It's a small thing, but I think it will help build the spirit of community in Judo.  That was honestly my favorite part of going to competitions back in the day - the camaraderie. 

So that's what I'm thinking.  What do you think?  What did I miss?  Where did I go too far?