For one reason or another,

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I slept through my alarm Sunday morning.  The official, and surprisingly true given my pathetic track record of laziness is that my cell phone battery died.  Given I use it as my alarm, it’s a very valid excuse.  Of course, as the evidence of my Saturday night above, I probably would’ve slept through my alarm anyway.

As such, I was awoken at 6:40 A.M. by my Judo Sensei ringing my door bell.  Upon greeting him in my boxers, I quickly realized the error of my ways.  Throwing on pants I darted to the bus to the laughter of several elementary schools students and adults all of whom managed to get to up on time.

The reason for the early depature was to make that day’s tournament.

Sunday Morning's True Warriors

There were white judo uniforms are far as the eye could see.  The competition had an innocent purity that comes with all amateur competitions, and was inspiring to watch.  Countless kids put their entire worlds on the line in front of their peers, coaches and parents for a fleeting glimpse of glory.

Hamatonbetsu’s first entry was a group of 7 to 9 year old boys, who fought valiantly, but lost in round one.  Some might say the potato chips and candy the kids were gorging at 7 A.M. on the bus ride over away from their parents eye didn’t help, but for my money it was the fact all their opponents were twice their size.

The 11 to 13 years came up next and kicked ass.  Watching the bracket,

was far better than any NCAA tournament could ever be.  The girls were the #1 seed and casually advanced all the way to the finals.  There they fought with courage, honor and awe-inspiring grit, but ended up losing.

I was sad to see them falter, but in my eyes they were the true champions.  All that you can ever ask from an athlete is to put their soul on the line and leave it all on the mat – sadly cliche and beautifully true – and those girls did all that and more.

Walking away I turned back quickly to see where the team was headed, when I observed one of the most touching scenes of my life.  Not only were the girls crying, something I’ve done myself countless times as an amateur and seen time and again, but so was Sensei.  To see that level of dedication, caring and compassion from a coach was honestly a total revelation to me.  On top of that, a few parents were shedding tears, as was one four year old, though I don’t think she really had any idea what was going on and was only following her mother’s lead.

I couldn’t cry, but I wanted to.  Not because of the girls losing, for the fact that despite being here almost 3.5 months my Japanese is so fucking bad I had nothing to say to attempt to persuade them it was all gonna be alright.

Écrit près Charles Jeffrey Danoff | Homepage | danoff dot charles at gmail dot com