The past two months we have been going through really hard training in order to prepare ourselves for Collegiate Nationals. Those two months have consisted of 6 days of judo, 3 days of weightlifting, circuit training and countless amount of hard work.
The amount of intensity that is exerted on the San Jose State Judo mats will make an average person stop before they even start. The drive that makes us come back every day, the drive that does not make us average, is knowing that at the end of the day we are better off because of it. As our team captain Colton Brown always says “No one in the U.S is working as hard as us”. Those words have been proven right time and time again. The week before the tournament we never do anything crazy with fear of injury. That does not mean the level of intensity changes, on our “easy week” we still have the same intensity as if it a regular week.
With the help of great coaches such as Shintaro Nakano, Mike Swain, Aiko Sato, Marti Malloy and countless guest instructors who come and help our team become stronger. All of this hard work is to make sure we do not disappoint at Collegiate Nationals. Collegiate Nationals is our Stanley Cup/World Series it is important to our school and the legacy that we have. It is most important to Uchida Sensei, this is one of the most important tournaments of the year. It is San Jose State’s legacy to win Collegiate Nationals we have only lost a handful of times out of decades. As freshman on this elite team we must prove ourselves by winning our divisions to help San Jose take home the National title once again.
I don’t see San Jose State losing this year; we have a very stacked team with our captain Colton Brown (Bronze at the Grand Prix in Miami and a World Team member) leading our team. Following him we have our power house juniors and seniors Matthew Ogata, Sidhartha Raj, and Ronnie Elor all reining Collegiate National Champions, and Brent Yasukochi. Our sophomores consist of Elaine Tandjung, Taylor Kaufman, Brenton Hsu, and Sophia Swain (Multi-Junior National Champ, Pan American Champ, and Junior World team member). Our freshman entering our first collegiate nationals consist of Lenny Guerrero-Baez , Willie Inserra (Multi-Junior National Champ, & Junior World Team Member), Lee Galles (Multi-Junior National Champion & Junior World Team member), and L.A. Smith III (Multi-Junior National Champ, Senior National Champ, & Junior World Team Member). Overall San Jose State feels very confident with coming home with that Collegiate National Title once again.
-William Inserra & Lenny Guerrero-Baez
