Over the past three weeks, an incredible 47 countries have participated and we have received almost 850 contributions.
With the two new challenges, there are two new golden cards that can be revealed. Maybe four-time world champion Clarisse Agbegnenou (FRA) will be the face of one of the next cards? Who knows?
Saso Sindic is the man behind the JudoFit Kids Golden League platform. With his team of programmers (4 people in total), he developed the website (https://fit.ijf.org/). We asked him a few questions to understand better how it works.
"I coordinated the development of the platform together with Leandra Freitas, from the IJF Judo for Children Commission and with the help of the whole IJF media team. In total, I had three programmers who worked to develop all the functional operations of the site. This was really a very interesting project."
Saso is also an active member of the IJF Judo for Children Commission and he has been involved for many years in developing educational programmes for children in his home country, Slovenia, “I am always interested in developing programmes and activities for children. They are the future. Of course, with the current health crisis, it is challenging. From an IT point of view, we had to completely adapt the JudoFit platform that we had developed a little earlier this year. We needed it to be simple to understand and to use by the children and their parents. The idea was to offer opportunities to the children to practise some physical activities that are related to judo, when most of them can not train in their own club for the moment."
With the JudoFit Kids Golden League, children have the opportunity to be part of the global judo family, “When performing the challenges, the children can win cards. I don't know if they noticed that they can really do something with the golden cards they collect. They can personalise them, with their own name, or even the name of their brothers and sisters and they can print them and share them on social media. I would love to collect all the cards myself, even! So please, click on the cards and see what you can do with them, it's pretty amazing."As the JudoFit Kids Golden League was specially designed for children, it is important to underline that, “As administrators we receive the videos from all over the world, but to protect the children, we don't show them publicly on the platform. It's important to protect the images of the children. What I can tell you is that it is amazing to see so many participants and to see how they organise themselves to participate, often with the help of their parents. It is really nice to see."
So far, Saso is very satisfied with the results, “We have already almost 850 participants from all over the world. This is amazing, but as the JudoFit Kids Golden League is gaining momentum, I am sure we can do better and the number of children can be more and more, to take part in this great competition. For the youngest, I'm sure it will attract them more to follow judo and for the older ones, they can learn more about their preferred champions."
Aside from the positive image that the platform offers, there is an important point that Saso wants to underline, before going back to his computer to continue developing programmes, “It is crucial that we keep developing the connection with the younger generation. As I said, they are the future, but the future is also online, especially nowadays with the lockdown situation. We need to stay in touch and connected, to be ready to restart practising as soon as possible. The exercices that we propose are also very interesting for the coaches and judo teachers. They can learn a lot about what exercise works for children. We had to think out of the box and I believe that with the JudoFit Kids Golden League we have achieved our goal."
So now, it's time to try out the two new challenges, while we are already excited for the next two, coming next Thursday, as usual. Stay tuned, because there will be even more surprises before the end of year.