GroundControl BJJ – the Auckland arm of Will-Machado BJJ held their first internal competition on April 17.

Often times newer students are hesitant about entering competitions. We often hear comments like “I don’t feel I’m ready” and “I’m not good enough yet”. The danger with that thinking is that by the time you do enter, it implies that you must think that you are “ready” or “good enough”. The result is that the student misses out on some great opportunities to compete and develop, and then when they do compete they find that they have put added pressure on their shoulders. That’s why we always advocate competing before you feel ready – so there’s no pressure, just an opportunity to have fun and learn.

And that is precisely what this competition was designed to do. Introduce the students to the competition environment in a low pressure arena amongst friends.

The response was tremendous – we had 30 competitors on the day representing the Howick, Takapuna and Hamilton clubs. All male competitors had at least two matches and the women had at least four.

The level of technique exhibited was very pleasing, especially for those who were taking the plunge into competition for the first time – some of whom had been training a number of months. Also in first time roles were the coaches in their capacity of referee.

As this was our first time refereeing we felt it important to put in place a very clear complaints procedure in the event of poor decisions. Namely – take it up with the coach concerned next time you are sparring with them. We must have done an ok job as to date no complaints have been received.

The name of the game was participation, and for that reason I will not go into specific results in this article. It is clear however that with 30 competitors, and some very strong prospects and some very technical BJJ developing at all levels we are looking forward to the next open tournament immensely.

The GroundControl internal tournament will be an annual feature leading into the new year. It’s a great way to bring the clubs together to begin the year and lead into the open tournaments. We also expect to be fielding some good size teams at the Will-Machado nationals both in NZ and Australia this year.

2006 was a huge year of growth for GroundControl. It is clear from the results of this day that 2007 will be even bigger.