Club hoops

A million years of martial arts experience, coaching certification, teaching experience, and a Jiu-Jitsu Blue Belt. What could be hard about teaching Jiu-Jitsu at a High School club.

You'd be surprised.

The school's wrestling room will be the location, and it's a dandy one. For safety, I want to limit how many kids are in the room at any one time. Banging heads is an issue. About 15 would be great.

The trouble is, we have 25 kids signed up so far, and that happened in just one day. Likely that number will continue growing.

This might mean two groups on different days. Problem solved.

There could also be an issue with families' perceptions? When people hear Jiu-Jitsu, they also think it means UFC. We will have a family meeting for anybody with concerns.

If it were a wrestling club, there wouldn't be an issue. Having been involved with both, I'd say wrestling is considerably more dangerous. In that sport, kids start rolling around freely almost immediately. In Jiu-Jitsu there is none of that.

The lessons are very structured. Wrestling is pretty safe, and Jiu-Jitsu is safer, at least the way we'll be doing it.

To be even more sensitive to safety concerns, I am altering the order in which the lessons are normally taught. I am delaying the first armlock by a few weeks to make sure I'm confident of the club members. Both the vice principal and I are quite willing to chuck out anybody with an unacceptable attitude or behavior. I know most of the kids already and it looks fine.

So we have to handle the kids, and the families. Anything else? There is the school's principal and its vice principal, and the school district. Anybody there can kill the whole thing. Luckily, the vice principal is just as involved as I am. He's been doing the administrator dance, and has found support all the way through.

The last step will be to make the Jiu-Jitsu association people happy. They want us to register as a Gracie Garage. This is based on the early days of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when they would literally train in somebody's garage. There are a couple of hoops to jump through, but nothing daunting. It is how we can deliver authentic Jiu-Jitsu at no cost to the kids.

We even have the instructor of the local Certified Training Center on board.

It looks like we start after Spring Break.