Judo: … Germans successful in the state individual championship

Germania’s judoka brought two championship titles and one runner-up title to Halberstadt at the state individual championships of the AK u15 in Tangermünde at the weekend.

For Milana Rosenhof, Albert Rupprich and Hannah Duve it was the first and last state championship in this age group. Next year the three Germans start in the next higher AK, in the u18. Due to the “Corona” restrictions, no state championships could be held in Saxony-Anhalt in the past 2 years. The three athletes had only one goal, to secure the title in the last year of this age group.

While Albert Rupprich was preparing for this championship at the sports school in Halle, Hannah Duve and Milana Rosenhof trained intensively with VfB trainer Holger Henschel.

On the day of the state championships, 70 judoka from 17 clubs in our state traveled to the Hanseatic city of Tangermünde. Already at the beginning of the competition you could literally feel the will to win of every single fighter. Concentrated, everyone prepared for the upcoming battles. Immediately after the opening speech by youth leader Ines Ernst-Schiller and the future mayor of Tangermünde Steffen Schilm, the competitions began and Milana Rosenhof entered the competition mat in the second fight. Milana’s motivation was unabated and she started her first competition with excellent techniques. She defeated her opponent with a lever technique, so that she had to give up. Shortly thereafter, Hannah Duve was preparing for her first fight against her permanent rival. Both judoka gave each other nothing in their fights so far and that day it was all about the national championship title. Both delivered a nerve-wracking fight until Hannah finally secured her opponent in the ground fight. The first win was perfect. While the girls were already able to score points with their opening victories, Albert was still on hold. Milana’s second fight went into overtime (golden score) because neither the VfB athlete nor her opponent were able to score in the regular fight time. But even the set time in the golden score was not enough for the two judoka, so that a referee’s decision decided on Milana’s narrow defeat.

As the competition progressed, Milana Rosenhof was able to secure the runner-up title.

Hanna confidently asserted herself in her next fight and also secured this victory. In the decisive last fight, Hannah Duve defeated her opponent with an inside thigh throw and became national champion.

Now the time had come for Albert Rupprich to unpack his repertoire of techniques. Albert started his first fight with a corner throw (Sumi-gaeshi) and won it after eighteen seconds. In this technique, the attacker breaks their opponent’s balance, falls backwards, and throws the opponent up and over their head.

The second fight was the most difficult. As with Milana, there was also a golden score here, since none of the fighters was able to score. Ultimately, Albert managed to assert himself with an arm lock technique on the floor and thus achieve victory.

In the last fight, Rupprich scored with hip and shoulder throws and became state champion in the under-15 age group.

With these placements, the three Judo-Germans qualified for the Central German Championships in Thuringia in three weeks.

So now the competition preparations for the next difficult task start.