How would you handle this?

[Cora Sek]

Lately I've been thinking about this topic over and over again. Now I'm here to get some of yall's opinion on the matter. Cora is 10 years old now and will start to fight in the 10-12 year old division (NAGA). When she was 9, we bumped her into the expert division thinking that the most any kids would have on her is about 4- 5 years experience if they started at 4 years old. Although Cora has only been doing JJ for 2 years, this wasn't much of a factor as Cora skill is well beyond kids with 2 years experience mostly due to 10thplanetJJ. However, now that she is 10, I worry that if we put her into the expert division for 10-12 years old, she will probably face kids that have well over 6-7 years experience and those 12 yr old boys will be more than she can handle. I'm thinking about dropping her back to the under 3 years experience and have her work her way back into the expert division. I do want her to compete at the highest level, but with only 9 tournaments under her, she doesn't have much experience compare to those kids at the expert division. Its like putting a blue belt vs a brown or black belt. What do you guys think?

[Jeremy Gates]

I would put her into the expert devision 10-12 years old for one tournament and see how she does. Depending how she does keep her there or move her down.

[Greg W]

Is her current goal to learn and improve at an excellerated pace or place well(win) at tournaments?

[Rachael Kaulig]

You would have to look into this more but I think NAGA tracks what division you’ve competed in and once you have competed in a higher division, you are unable to lower your division in the future. It’s some system they used to prevent “sandbagging”. Like I said, you’d have to look into it. I thought I heard something about it but I could be totally wrong.

[Ryan Brick]

Have her keep competing at the highest level you dont want to simply win and have it be no challenge, better to loose and have a good match. IMO

You may find that she does better then you think.

I watched her destroy Eddie, those kids wont be as good as Master Bravo

[Cora Sek]

Rachael: yes I have read that on NAGA website also. She have done 2 NAGA so far and the 1st one was in the girls intermediate division which she basically put on a Triangle clinic, got the girls out in less than a minute each. The 2nd NAGA was this past Dec and she really did great against the expert boys, but they were still in the 8-9 year old division. She got 2nd place both Gi and NO Gi and lost to a boy that was an orange/green belt. Cora is yellow/orange belt.

Greg: you know us by now. Of course our goal for Cora is to learn. But at the same time I have to becareful as too not rush her into this game too fast. Its never about the medals for us. All her medals right now are collecting dust... I'm afraid if I put her against a 12 yr old expert boy, that might be more than she can handle and thus might change the way she look at this game. It can have an adverse affect on her training. Not sure about adults, but these are kids and when their confidence goes down by getting beat all the time, their training suffers. Some even quit all together. I've seen it happen many times at our gym, boys that were doing so well against other kids and when Cora beat them too many times, they just stop putting up a fight.

[Cora Sek]

I'm really on the fence on this one for sure. I do want her to compete at the highest level. But being a parent, I have to protect her also...you know what I mean? On the other hand, the 1st NAGA she enter was last Aug and her mom and I were feeling the same way I'm doing now. Not sure what division to put her in. So we registered her for the Intermediate. Then NAGA decided to put her with the girls, and all the boys we wanted her to fight was in the expert division. Well she end up having an easy 1st place win. ANd we then went to watch the boys. The boy who won 1st place and took home the belt, Cora end up tapping him out twice since that time. I hear what everyone is saying about learning and competing. In Mar and April she has 4 tournaments (2 NAGA). We still have 2 more weeks to polish up her half guard game, and hopefully she really get good at it, then she will be fighting in the expert division as 12 year old boys who been doing this for 5-6 years are BEAST!!!!

[Slick Rick]

Do you think that she'll be able to find more girls to fight at that age then? Maybe she won't have to go against boys in their pre-puberty stages after all.

[Mark Holloway]

I say have her compete at the higher level but make sure she is consciously aware of the level she is entering into and the challenge that it brings. If she doesn't smoke the competition, she doesn't get overly discouraged. It will give her motivation to keep learning and she should feel very rewarded when she does beat the more experienced competitors.

[Cora Sek]

Rick: although I have seen more and more girls coming into the sport and are competing, NAGA only put girls with girls for the Intermediate division. For expert division, they combine girls and boys unless I am wrong. We only been competing for half a year so I can be wrong about this.