The Pan American Championships for Judo were held over the weekend in Havana. The US had some good success stories, especially on the women’s side where they won two gold medals. The first one went unsurprisingly to Kayla Harrison in the -78kg division. Harrison scored ippons in all three of her matches en route to the title. The other gold went to Marti Malloy in the -57kg division. Malloy scored ippons in her first two matches before winning the gold over Canada’s Catherine Beauchemin-Pinard on penalties. Also winning a medal for the US women was Angelica Delgado in the -52kg division where she grabbed bronze. Delgado won her first match with a waza-ari before losing to Canada’s Ecaterina Guica on an ippon in the semifinal. A waza-ari in the repechage bronze medal match gave her the third medal for the US women.
In other women’s events Giovanna Prado lost in the first round to Dayaris Mestre Alvarez of Cuba via ippon in the -48kg division and Kathleen Sell lost to Maria Perez of Puerto Rico via ippon in the -70kg division. Two Americans met in the -63kg quarterfinals with Leilani Akiyama advancing over Hannah Martin on a yuko. Both lost their bronze medal matches via ippon, Akiyama to Estefania Garcia of Ecuador and Martin to Stefanie Tremblay of Canada. In the +78kg division Nina Cutro-Kelly lost to Vanessa Zambotti of Mexico on penalties in the quarterfinals and did earn a bronze medal match but lost it on penalties to Melissa Mojica of Puerto Rico.
On the men’s side the US grabbed a silver medal in the -81kg division from Travis Stevens. Stevens won on penalties twice before an ippon in the semifinals over Victor Penalber of Brazil got him into the gold medal match. Stevens once again saw a match come down to penalties and lost this time to Antoine Valois-Foster of Canada. The other silver came from Colton Brown in the -90kg division. Brown won with ippons twice, including a quarterfinal victory over fellow American Jacob Larsen, before advancing past Mexican Isao Cardenas on penalties to reach the final. Tiago Camilo of Brazil scored an ippon on Brown to win the gold in the final. Larsen had an ippon in his first match of the day and his first in the repechage but lost by one to Thomas Briceno of Chile in his bronze medal match.
First round losers for the US were Arash Soofiani on a yuko against Johao Velasco of Ecuador in the +100kg division, Adonis Diaz by waza-ari in the -60kg division against Brazil’s Eric Takabtake, and Aaron Kunihiro, also in the -60kg division, by ippon to Michael Patino Villagra of Peru.
Alex Tadehara won his first match based on two yukos before losing on an ippon in the quarterfinals. Tadehara would advance to a -100kg bronze medal match but lost to Luciano Correa of Brazil on a yuko. Over in the -73kg division Nicholas Delpopolo won his quarterfinal match by waza-ari but lost in the semifinals on penalties to Arthur Margelidon of Canada. Delpopolo had a bronze medal match still against Alonso Wong of Peru but lost it on an ippon.
Finally in the -66kg division Maximillian Schneider started off with an opening round ippon but lost on a waza-ari to Canadian Antoine Bouchard in the quarterfinals. Schneider lost his second straight match when he took on Juan Perez of Chile in the repechage, that one by an ippon.
There is a Judo Grand Slam event in Baku, Azerbaijan starting on Friday as the final few chances await athletes trying to move up the world ranking list before the Olympic qualifiers are announced on May 30th.
Previous Judo Coverage:
USA Senior National Championships Recap