Dear all,
This is my one formal email of the year and my last as Club Captain to say a huge thank you to everyone in the club, and a chance for me to say goodbye and good luck to next year's committee who can hopefully build on the success that we've had this year.
It's incredibly difficult to put into words everything we've achieved as a club this year, especially considering 4 years ago we had 6 people at training and virtually no competition success. We started out with the biggest fresher's week turnout we've ever had and many of us were starting to wonder where we were going to fit everyone on the mats. We started with a new coach as well who came to us purely on a recommendation and our old boys with their black belts and years of experience had all left in the same year. But we took that, trained hard and if you look back at what we've done we've achieved so so much. London Open Champions, an impressive display at USIST and 2nd in the BUCS medal table. Everyone can be proud of what they achieved, including those who narrowly missed selection due to the pointless rules imposed by the BUCS committee.
Above all though, our success is down to every one of you who turned up to slog it out in training, to those who were at South Ken station at 6:30am for the London Open, to everyone who piled into the gym. We also owe a massive thank you to Glenn, our phenomenal coach, without whom none of this would have been possible. He pushed us, shouted at us and made us do one more press up but it definitely paid off.
So all in all, I'd like to thank you for an incredible year, for everyone's amazing hard work both in training and organising nights out, house parties etc. and congratulations to everyone, medal or not.
I look forward to seeing everyone progressing even more and adding to the medal hoard!
I also wish Alice the very best of luck as Club Captain next year.
Have a great summer everyone.
Jake Woods
Club Captain
Imperial College Judo Club