Pete Muldoon’s seminar from the other day got me thinking about my first Judo lessons, and has me wondering why I ever stopped. From day one you learn how to jump and fall, all while wrestling your friends to the ground. No katas or forms, just controlled roughhousing. Randori, as judokas refer to it. As a kid I loved it. And while I have always gravitated more towards of the striking arts, Judo was one of the first martial arts that I was introduced to when I was younger. Alot of time has past since those days. In fact it had been so long that I was shocked when my mother told me that it had been more than twenty-five years since my last Judo tournament.
I started taking Judo while I was a camper at Kutsher’s Sports Academy back in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The summers that I spent at Kutsher’s were some of the fondest memories from my youth. Back then my world revolved around basketball. All other sports were basically just a distraction. They were something to simply past the time until basketball season came back around. Initially, I took Judo merely as a way to stay indoors and take a break from the pounding summer heat that we had to endure while playing basketball up in the Catskills Mountains. The dojo was padded, quiet, and cool when compared to the asphalt we hooped on daily. It made perfect sense to me to retreat to the relative comfort of the dojo. It was during this time that I met a gentleman called Ken Freeman who would introduce me to the sport of Judo.
Sensei Freeman, while small in stature, was probably one of the toughest men I have ever met. His demeanor was also very different from the screaming basketball coaches that instructed me. He never lost his cool, he never raised his voice, and his actions on the mat left no doubt that he knew his art. I remember being amazed at how effortlessly he was able to manipulate and throw people nearly twice his size around the mat. One of the first times he demonstrated a foot sweep on me I was literally sent flying across the room. As I hit the floor and rolled to my feet, he smiled and commented on the look of shock and excitement that must have been on my face. “Jimmy, I think you are going to like randori”. He as right, I loved it.
Every summer for the next 6 years as I went off to Kutsher’s, and whenever I wasn’t playing basketball, I worked on learning whatever I could about judo. I tried to keep up with it during the rest of the year, but Sensei Freeman’s school was too far away in New Jersey for me to go with any regularity. I looked at training with other instructors in NYC, but it wasn’t the same. Plus money was tight, and the last thing my mother needed was another expense. After awhile I started to focus exclusively on basketball again, but I never forgot those session with Sensei Freeman.