COMPETITIVE AT WORK

After the third/fourth session she announced she had put us forward for a schools competition. We protested! How could we possibly do that when we didn't even have any belts between us moreless a Dan.

But she insisted this would be good experience for us, yeah right, we all thought maybe she had been knocked senseless in a judo match at sometime. There wasn't even time to practice our moves as the competition was to take place at the end of the week....she was definitely thrown to the mat too many times!!

Anyway, we all had white belts and the judo uniform without any club badge. The judo kit was given to us by the school for the duration of the competition. Each of us where called to the mat to fight an opponent, most of the time it was an orange or yellow belted facing opposite.

My luck...not! I got a brown belt to fight against. If I remember correctly, it was the best out of three matches. She won the first round of the fight again by a head lock position. So as I didn't want my head to be stuck in another noose for the last two matches I won them against all the odds, simply because I refused to let her go and move position to where I held her down. The result in the overall competition by a team effort our school came third in our first tournment...not bad for non-belted girls.

In business which is sometimes liken to warfare. We also played the game of British Bull Dog (the original Staffordshire Bull Dog that is) and sting ball which when thrown it had an extra spin on it tail which not only stung but left its mark for weeks.

British girls used to play it. One person would stand in the playground, the others lined up in a row because they had to make it to the other side of the field in one piece. One by one, the girl would pick them off by any means; no holds barred! This included most sports tactics of wrestling, martial arts, football, rugby etc. Those that she caught became part of her team, until the last one was left.

Unfortunately, our playground was made of not grass but concrete, so the girls who played this game had alot of explaining to do to our parents as to why our clothes were in shreds, bruises on our persons' and grazed kneecaps. But it did channel our aggressivity into competitiveness which helped sustain our sense of purpose in our career and lives.