Philly Judo/BJJ Cup

This is going to be a long one.....

This past weekend was the Philadelphia 1st annual BJJ and Judo cup. Liberty Bell held the tournament as a Judo only tournament last year. This year Maxercise and Liberty decided to get together and run a BJJ tournament concurrently with the Judo tournament. I thought it was a great idea, combining saves money and spreads the costs over more students. It also (hopefully) advocates the benefits of cross training between the two sports. For my part I ref'd some of the BJJ matches, competed in BJJ and competed in Judo. Overall I think the tournament was a big success.

On the tournament itself

What we did right

Combining forces and forming alliances with the Judo community. I am sick of the political bull. I am convinced that praticing both is the best way to training.

Making accommodations for competitors in both Judo and BJJ. Both sides did what was necessary to make sure players were not running directly from one mat to another and no one was DQ'd for not showing up to their match b/c they were in the middle of another match.

Price was very reasonable, I think $40 to enter plus $20 for each additional division. So for me it was $60.

The rules were very clear - BJJ = CBJJ rules, Judo = standard USJA rules. If you want to compete you need to know the rules.

Location - Easy to find, clean, temperature controlled AND it had showers!

What we did wrong

I dont think we really did anything "wrong" but I did make three observations for improvement.

1) The Judo side of the tournament had a lot more competitors and they were still able to finish about 2 hours ahead of BJJ. I am not really sure why, but I suspect we had more down time between matches. That said there may be an opportunity to further educate some folks on how to run the tables from a bracketing and division management perspective. Basically, a 101 on how do you run a mat with as little deadtime as possible. Speaking for myself, I have never put together a bracket or decided who would fight when so when decisions had to be made those decisions took extra time.

Side Note: BJJ had Gi and No Gi, but I still think Judo had more total matches.

2) We ran Judo kids, teen and adult at the same time we ran BJJ kids, teen and adult. If we mix up the order it might encourage more cross competition and there would be less running back and forth between sides of the gym. My recommendation would be run

Judo BJJ
Kids Teen
Adult Kids
Teen Adult

3) We need to take the other BJJ and Judo tournaments running at the same time into consideration. This tournament conflicted with the NY no-gi open. October is packeted full of tournaments, but we may have gotten more BJJ competitors if it was on a different weekend.

Over all I think the tournament went very well and I hope it turns into an annual event I can attend for many years to come.