Sport
7 November, 2022
Malanda judoka show out
JUDO practitioners from the Malanda Judo Club travelled down to the Australian Kodokan Judo National Championships in Adelaide and brought back some bling with all achieving medals in their divisions.
At the beginning of last month, a team of four judoka from the club flew down to compete in the highly prestigious and competitive National Championships.
Judo is an Olympic sport where players win matches by throwing their opponent or by obtaining a submission on the ground with a hold down, armlock or strangle.
Matches are four minutes in duration and require skill, strength and endurance to win.
Malanda Judo Club did extremely well for a small club from Far North Queensland even competing against each other at times.
Club head instructor Winfried Weiss was pleased to see his students do well at Nationals.
“It’s great to see that the extra effort and training everyone put in has produced such amazing results,” he said.
“Malanda Judo Club has a long history of producing state and national level players and our current judoka showed their courage, determination and talent to succeed at this level.”
It was smiles all around for Daniel Shaugnessy who got first in the cadet male under 73kg and the Mens under 73kg (blue belt and below) division, as well as second in the cadet male open.
Taylor Lander got third in both the boys under 16 under 70kg and the cadet male open competitions.
Anthony Crooks-Chen beat out his fellow Malanda judoka to get second in the boys under 16 under 70kg category while Georgia Speare got second in both the cadets female open weight and the women’s under 78kg.
Malanda Judo Club has been training and competing since 1985 and trains on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5.30-7.30pm during school terms.
Currently the club has approximately 50 players (kids and adults) with an even split between males and females.
