2019: The year that was

The end of the year is coming. It's a good time to reflect on the year that was.

In a way, it was a tumultuous year. We had to move twice. We were quite happy to be in Damansara Perdana because the mat area in the gym that we were in was quite spacious. Then, the gym closed down so we had to find a new location. We moved into a yoga studio in Bangsar but that didn't work out because they needed to wear shoes for some of their activities and we can't have shoes on our mats.

In the end, we settled into a badminton hall, which isn't the most obvious place to have a judo dojo but it has worked out well for us. The crucial difference I guess is that unlike the three other venues in the past (Cheras, Damansara Perdana & Bangsar), this is our own dojo. We are not renting someone else's dojo or studio but rather we now have our own dojo inside a badminton hall. This gives us more flexibility in terms of scheduling classes and putting in the infrastructure that we need.

Membership has grown, both in terms of competitors and recreational players. We also have some kids now, as well! While there is certainly still plenty of room for growth, we are delighted that we have enough of a critical mass of players to hold almost daily classes (except Mondays) and even during exam periods or holiday periods when students are usually indisposed, we are able to still have sessions with a decent turnout. In fact, recently when all instructors were out-of-state, a few of the players carried on training, which is great. We hope to continue to grow all three segments (competitor, recreational players and children) in 2020.

This year, we began working with Majlis Sukan Wilayah Persekutuan to develop players for SUKMA. There isn't much time to do development work for SUKMA 2020 since we don't have that many juniors in our club. For much of our club's existence, it has been a club geared towards working adults so we have a very limited number of juniors to work with. Still, we will do our best and hopefully deliver at least one gold.