Speyer/Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region. With a clear 10:4 home win against JC Bottrop, the women of JSV Speyer have secured second place in the 1st Judo Bundesliga. Both the top fighters, who had already been successful at the German Championships the week before, and the young Speyer natives were able to convince and make important contributions. Team boss Barbara Bandel emphasized the contribution of the young fighters from the Speyer second division team. In view of some personnel failures – the JSV had to do without foreign fighters on this day of the fight and there were a few more short-term failures in addition to the previously known failures – this was also particularly important. “They kept stepping on the gas both when fighting on the mat and off the mat when cheering on their teammates, it was amazing,” said Barbara Bandel. With Özlem Gülmez, it was also one of the young Speyer players from the second division team who were the first had to go to the mat and immediately showed a really strong performance. She only had to admit defeat in the golden score (overtime). Afterwards, the JSV was able to muster two freshly crowned German champions, namely Teresa Zenker – who made her debut for the JSV – and Jana Ziegler, who competed in the category up to 63 kilograms. Both celebrated early victories and gave their team the lead. Although Bertille Murphy had to give up her fight against Miriam Butkereit, the second Speyer debutant of the day, Darja Dorowskich, immediately restored the lead and delighted her team boss: “Their way of fighting – focused and variable in all directions – impressed me a lot “, says Barbara Bandel. Jessica Lindner and Jasmin Grabowski (without a fight) got the last two points of the first round, so that the JSV was able to take a clear 5:2 lead into the break.
Although Bottrop came back to 5:4 because Julia Holstein and Lea Schmid had to cede the points to their opponents, there were no longer any real doubts about the victory of the JSV. Jana Ziegler again won up to 63 kilograms, Bertille Murphy won her second fight after losing the first round, and Darja Dorowskich scored for the second time. The victories by Jessica Lindner and Jasmin Grabowski without a fight made the final score 10:4. “It was a great team effort. You can really see here how a unit grows together from the older and younger fighters, from the foreign fighters and the Speyer natives, from the first and second division teams. We hope that we will have a few more fighters available for the coming fight days so that we can successfully compete for the rest of the season,” says Barbara Bandel, who is now going on the summer break with her team before there are two more fight days in September – at BC Karlsruhe and at the all-powerful league leaders TSG Backnang, who again won 14-0 on Saturday.
