Judges are an absolute necessity for a tournament to function. A good tournament will have a variety of styles, schools and hopefully states represented.
A difficult task for a promoter is if the school’s coaches or sensei will not judge because they are too busy watching their students. Help out yourself, your competitor, the promoter, and encourage your coaches and sensei to be judges.
Take a video so they can critique your student after a tournament instead of sitting on the sidelines.
Offer to be the support system for your school’s competitors, while they judge.Your coach or sensei will have already taught your competitor what to do, let them do it and share the results after.
Having your sensei as a judge will be beneficial for the circuit and also for you. It ensures that your style is represented in what judges are looking for and helps keep tournaments unbiased. It will also help the tournament to run faster.
Judges and Referees need to be certified. This insures that everyone is current on the rules and it will improve judging as a whole. Certification is offered at large tournaments and can be given by a State or Regional Representative. Test forms are available online at USKaratealliance.com.
