Congratulations to all of our Katharo competitors for bringing home 2nd place at the Grappling Industries Jiu-Jitsu tournament on Saturday (6/16/18).

What was different about this tournament compared to others?

Well, quite a lot actually. The biggest change is that we had a lot more students who competed in the tournament: both children and adults. It was great to see new faces out there competing on the mats and experiencing competition for the first time.

It was very exciting for coaches to have students and parents interested in competing. With this higher demand for competition, the coaches of Katharo adapted their curriculum by adding more structure and support, especially for the kids programs. The programs not only covered drilling, strength and conditioning, strategy, and defense, but also the mental aspects of competing.

In the Kid’s Competition class (Saturday’s 9-10:30) the youth competitors are now goal setting and goal planning in their Jiu-Jitsu journals. While you compete individually in Jiu-Jitsu, you train together as a team and all coaches and instructors made sure to create a positive team environment with a unified goal to bring home a trophy. Another aspect that the kids coaches really emphasized was to encourage our students both on the mats and at home. A special thank you to Coach Derek Nye for rallying the kids team and encouraging them to register for tournament.

It is absolutely crucial that competitors are mentally and emotionally prepared for competition. This is where parents really have a huge impact and we would like to thank them for the constant communication they had with our coaches.

On the adult side, we were very pleased to have more students want to compete due to the encouragement and support of Coach John and teammates. In fact, the increased drive to compete from our students has inspired Coach John to develop a more structured competition program much like the ones kids program. This new Jiu Jitsu competition program will be ready for our serious athletes July 7, 2018.

In fact, thank you coaches for your time and dedication to helping our students! Coaches at Katharo spend a lot of time teaching and supporting the team without getting paid.

While we are proud of everyone who stepped onto the mats, we would like to recognize our those who medaled: Derek Nye, Skylar Cisarik, Russell Castillo, Molly Raper, Zachary Wilson, CJ Climp, and Daniel Munoz.

If you did not get the chance to compete this time but are interested, please talk to your instructors about it to get started.