What Was Learned in Kansas City: Part 1

We went to the Midwest Freestyle Judo Championships and it was another great experience.

My Gompers Judo students learned a lot, including:

• You can try things that scare you, like flying on a plane for the first time, leaving your parents for the first time, competing in a judo tournament away from home for the first time, and surprise yourself by how well you handle it.
• People who look nothing like you and seemingly have very little in common can still turn out to be really nice.

 You don't have to act tough all of the time. It's totally okay to just be a kid sometimes and play around.

There's a really big world outside of south Los Angeles.

There are people who believe that every judo coach wants to be the Olympic coach and all those who don't coach at the international level are failures.

I'm the opposite of that. I ended up coaching at some international events because my daughter needed me to be there, but truly, the only kind of coaching I ever really wanted to do was this team.

It's funny, too, because Ronda and I ended up teaching at Gompers because my daughter, Jenn, had done her student teaching there. Jennifer said from the very beginning,

"Teaching in an urban school wasn't my fall back plan because I couldn't do what I really wanted to do. This was my plan."

Hopefully, I'll be as good of a teacher as Jenn.