Yudansha: 1984 - 2007

1. G

   I don’t know about the oth­ers, but John Edgar Boyes, Jim Mongomery, and Brandan Lueder all started tak­ing Taido in 2000. Also, there are 5 on this list that have been offi­cially invited to seek rec­om­men­da­tions to test for Shodan, and one (Abinav) who will test in this fall. Abinav also started in 2000 and would have tested with the oth­ers this sum­mer except that he suf­fered a very bad break to his wrist play­ing soc­cer this spring. By the way, it was great to see you at Summer Camp.
2. Gabriel

   I started around Feb. in 1995. (about a month before my dad)
   My sis started early in 1997, I believe at the first “offi­cial” work­out of the year.
   Anyway hope that helps. I look for­ward to your next post.
3. andy

   thanks, guys. i’ll get to those cor­rec­tions real soon. i added the new names directly from a test form from sum­mer camp, so i’m not sur­prised it ended up being a lit­tle off. it’s hard to keep this updated now that the list is going to include peo­ple whom i’ve never met… i’ll try to get a semi-official idea of how to deal with “junior” black belts.

   in the mean­time, i have sep­a­rated the junior black belts form the shodan group and removed abinav’s name.
4. G

   Jared Isenstein, Nick Miller, Rahul Ghosh, and Veenal Mulji are the other four who were invited to seek rec­om­men­da­tions. I’m glad there is a place where this infor­ma­tion is being kept. It would be great is some­one would take on the task of revamp­ing the US Taido site, hint hint.
5. andy

   actu­ally, sev­eral peo­ple have vol­un­teered their time and effort to revamp the honbu web­site. i know for a fact that one per­osn cre­ated an absolutely stun­ning site that got rejected. the prob­lem is that all of these peo­ple under­stand web design much bet­ter than they under­stand mits uchida. nonethe­less, plans are being made (again), and some­thing is in the works.

   also, since you know much more about these guys than i do, could you tell me if the names i have pulled out as juniors are cor­rect? i mean, did i get the right guys? — i am really bad at ages… thanks for all your help.
6. G

   I’m not sure about Hod, but the oth­ers are right. I’m glad to hear some­thing is in the works for the honbu site.
7. Shelley

   Hi, Andrea Gertz started in 2002. If I remem­ber I’ll ask other peo­ple on the list you don’t have.
8. Shelley

   Oh yeah, I’m pretty sure Mary started in 2000.
9. brian k dixon

   attempt­ing to reach sen­sei John Roberts; founder of the Georgia College Taido Club 1984 – 1987. If it is pos­si­ble to for­ward my email to him please do. Brian K Dixon

   email address hidden
10. andy

    brian:
    i will give john your info. were you a stu­dent of his?
11. John

    I think its wrong that you have labeled sev­eral peo­ple like Musashi, Sue and James as “inac­tive” on this list. If I’m cor­rect, Musashi has won the 2 most recent Jissen tour­na­ments in the U.S. If that doesn’t get you “active” on Andy’s list, I don’t know what will. I’ve seen them at class sev­eral times this year and at Kangeiko (don’t think I saw you there).

    What exactly is your cri­te­ria of inac­tive? “I haven’t seen him/her lately, so they must be Taido inac­tive?” You should air more on the side of cau­tion with such state­ments, then be so quick to label some­one inactive.
12. andy

    the “inac­tive” des­ig­na­tion has always been a sticky issue to me. i’ve never been quite sat­is­fied with exactly where to draw the line on it. as a result, the cri­te­ria have changed sev­eral times over the ten years that i’ve main­tained this list. you can rest well assured that i am by no means “quick to label some­one inactive.”

    the truth is that i haven’t updated this list in sev­eral months — not since the last giant batch of pro­mo­tions at sum­mer camp 2006. at that time, my major cri­te­ria for deter­min­ing “activ­ity” was a reg­u­lar com­mit­ment to show up for practice.

    things that don’t meet the require­ments for “active” sta­tus in my list are win­ning tour­na­ments years ago and show­ing up for peri­odic big events like kangeiko and sum­mer camp. by such stan­dards, a lot of peo­ple who don’t con­tribute in mean­ing­ful ways to taido would be con­sid­ered active. that’s not how i define things.

    w/r/t kangeiko: you are cor­rect that i was not in atten­dance. i spoke to mr. uchida sev­eral times dur­ing the pre­ced­ing week and was excused since sat­ur­days are a busy day of work for me. how­ever, i heard that a lot of black belts were there, includ­ing one per­son who cur­rently teaches another mar­tial art. that’s cool. it’s still not the same as actively work­ing to pro­mote and develop taido and its students.

    as writ­ten above, the list “is included as a part of this site for informational/archival pur­poses only,” and is only accu­rate to the best of my knowl­edge. should you, or any­one whose name appears in this list, care to pro­vide me with atten­dance records reveal­ing that i’ve made any mis­take, i will quickly revise this page.

    in the mean­time, i will err on the side of trust­ing the data i have to go on.
13. John Hinckley

    I started in early 2000 and Brian started in late 1999

    hope that helps ;)
14. andy

    Thanks, John. I’ve updated those listings.
15. Shelley

    Hi, I believe that Clinton Hammond and Tom Lapenna tested for 3^rd degree at sum­mer camp 2007.

    Mike Goodroe, Mahendra & Romik Srivastava tesed for 2^nd degree at sum­mer camp 2007.
16. Andy

    Someone recently called my atten­tion to this video of a short Taido demon­stra­tion in honor of Russell Bietsch.

    In his intro­duc­tion, Brenden makes two inter­est­ing statements:

    1. That in 35 years, US Taido has had up to 25,000 members.
    2. That only 60 of those reached black belt.

    Both are clearly BS.

    In the case of the first state­ment, the dojo would have to reg­is­ter at least two new stu­dents every sin­gle day of busi­ness for 35 years (assum­ing two weeks off a year and 6 busi­ness days each week) to get 25,000 students.

    As for the sec­ond state­ment, the record above clearly shows that at least twice that num­ber had been awarded black belts by 2007. The total is pos­si­bly as high as 150 by now.

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