Youth leadership key to strength of Nunavut judo club

Warren Keim leads the class in warmups during a Nunavut Judo class at Aqsarniit Middle School March 31. (PHOTOS BY STEVE DUCHARME)

Matilda Pinksen overseas practice between two young students March 31.

A young student extends a hand to coach Andrew Keim after tripping him.

Nunavut Judo is all about the next generation.

That much is apparent when you first walk into Iqaluit’s Aqsarniit Middle School gym during the youth judo classes.

“Drop! Left! Right!” senior instructor Andrew Keim yells to a mob of 8 to 14-year-olds.

In the corner of the gym, a practice routine between two young boys devolves into a wrestling match on the mat.

“Don’t step on his head!” Keim tells one of the boys.

Admittedly, instructing children this young is a lot like herding cats, he told Nunatsiaq News.

“It’s organized chaos,” he said with a chuckle.

“At that age, you’re not even teaching judo, you’re teaching body awareness. But they all learn how to fall down, how to grip, how to stand up… and that’s 90 per cent of judo,” Keim said, on the fundamentals.

Judo is a nineteenth century Japanese martial art that relies on throws, take-downs and submission tactics to subdue an opponent.

It was made an Olympic sport at the 1962 games in Tokyo.

And while the youngest students in the Iqaluit program are only grasping the basics of judo, some of them will eventually go on to become instructors in their own right.

At least that’s the hope of Nunavut Judo.

It’s a formula that the club has been perfecting for almost two decades since its inception as a program for “at-risk” youth in Iqaluit.

In many ways it’s been the key to this organization’s survival: a success story amidst other sport programs in Nunavut that routinely finds coaches to be in short supply.

“We don’t even have a resident black belt [right now], so we’re not really a dojo. We are, but we aren’t,” said Keim.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Marie-Claude Grenier, an instructor at the club, was one of the first children in the program when it began more than 10 years ago.

Grenier is currently training for her black belt in the discipline, but has served as a senior instructor for the past several years after the original coaches at the club moved on.

“She is the person we all aspire to be. She’s been doing this since high school,” said Keim.

Several junior coaches, who aren’t much older than the students themselves, teach the classes alongside Grenier, Keim and the other senior coaches.

“They are truly the life and spirit of the program,” Keim said.

Like Grenier, Keim’s assistant coaches have been with the club from an early age. Their growth into instructors has been carefully encouraged and supported by the club as they‘ve developed.

“We learn skills that will help us in the future, like leadership and talking in front of people,” said Keim’s son, Warren.

At 14, Warren is the youngest assistant coach currently at the dojo, but he’s already logged hundreds of hours training students.

Usually that involves leading warm-ups at the beginning of class, but assistant coaches are also responsible for supervising the students as they learn new techniques.

“It’s tiring but it’s worth it,” Warren said.

As for their larger place in the organization, the coaches are eager to see the children they teach today take leadership roles tomorrow.

“They’re going to be the future of [the Judo program]… It’s important that they carry the torch,” said 17-year old junior coach Matilda Pinksen.

To that end, several of the club’s youngest participants recently returned with medals from competitions at the annual Montreal Cup Judo Tournament.

“It feels like you can do anything in judo, when you’re having fun. You get to learn how to defend yourself,” said Gina Timar, who took home a silver medal.

Altogether, the club boasted an impressive showing in Montreal: earning two trophies, along with four silver, two bronze and two gold medals for some of its youngest athletes.

“It was the first time any of them had ever been to a competition,” Keim said about the students’ success.

Several other students have gone on to win in international competitions, due in part, said Keim, to the quality of coaching given by senior staff as well as the junior coaches.

“We have natural athletes [here],” he said.

Keim hopes to see Nunavut Judo expand into other communities, as students from the program move away from Iqaluit but want to continue their training.

“We hope that it catches in in Rankin Inlet, where we have a guy, Robert Tookoome, who went to high school [in Iqaluit]…and wants to run a club,” Keim said.

Its an expensive project, but one that Nunavut Judo hopes to undertake in the coming years.

Judo training mats, for example, cost almost $15,000.

The club is funded in part by Sport Nunavut, and also receives discounted airfare from First Air to send athletes to national competitions.

Keim said he hopes by investing now the club will have a good showing at the next international competition, the Western Canada Summer Games in 2018.

Approximately 80 people of all ages and backgrounds are currently enrolled in Iqaluit’s Nunavut Judo program.

Classes are held Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at Aqsarniit.

For more information, visit the club’s Facebook page here.