Rick Undesser’s elbow still ached from the injury suffered in his first judo match of the day. Now, this LAS alumnus was facing the same Russian competitor who had defeated him in that first fight—the same man who had also injured him by over-extending his elbow. Only this time, the gold medal was on the line in the World Masters Judo Championship in Atlanta last August.
“My wife said she felt like she was watching Rocky Balboa,” says Undesser, a 1996 University of Illinois graduate in Spanish.
After his initial defeat, Undesser had studied the Russian’s tactics throughout the day, and he noted that the man used the same move over and over to defeat all competitors. So Undesser wasn’t caught off-guard in the gold-medal match when the Russian suddenly dropped on his back and grabbed his arm, intending to defeat the LAS alum with a submission move known as an “arm bar.” This time, Undesser was ready for him.
As the Russian dropped to his back, Undesser did a one-handed cartwheel over him and then landed on top. He pinned the Russian for the required 25 seconds—“the longest 25 seconds I have ever experienced,” he says. The result: Undesser walked away as the 2009 world judo champion in the ages 30-to-34 bracket.
Undesser got his start in judo as a sixth grader, but in the beginning he was not at all interested. His parents had just divorced, and a friend had told his father that getting his kids involved in activities would help them cope. So judo it was. Not being one to quit, Undesser grew to love the sport and see its intrinsic values.
“You learn discipline, and you learn to make yourself do things even when you don’t want to,” he says. Today, Undesser is passing on that same discipline to his students at Minooka Community High School, where he teaches Spanish and has formed the school’s first judo club—one of the few such clubs in any Illinois high school.
The judo club just started this semester, but Undesser says he has already seen students gain more focus, which has carried over into their classes, “elevating their grades.” Judo has also given some students their first sense of belonging to the school community.
“I’ve got seniors in the club who had never been a part of the school community before, but they’re absolutely gung-ho,” says Undesser, who also coaches at the Yorkville Judo Club. “They’re proud to wear the Minooka emblem on their judo uniform.”
The judo club meets twice a week after school, and it averages about 25 students from all grade levels, boys and girls. But they don’t just learn self-defense. Undesser says they also learn respect for “who they are, where they are, and who they are around.”
For instance, one student had punched a classmate in the nose for taunting him in gym class—an incident that occurred before the student decided to join the judo club. But since then, judo has taught him self-restraint.
“In the future, he knows he doesn’t have to prove that he’s tough,” Undesser says. “He can handle it better now.”
According to Undesser, judo is closer to wrestling than many other martial art. The word “judo” is translated as “the gentle way” because the sport’s founder removed all of the dangerous and inefficient moves from jujitsu when creating judo in 1882. Today, Undesser says judo is second only to soccer in popularity throughout the world.
Undesser is a second-degree black belt, and he says that his lessons in perseverance paid off during his years at U of I. When he came to campus, he discovered he didn’t have good study habits, and his grades showed it. But the discipline he learned in judo inspired him to stick with it, and he bounced back, eventually making it onto the Dean’s List. These are the kinds of lessons he wants to impart to his students as well as to his three children, one of whom has just begun judo.
“I’ve never been one to give up. I stick to things,” he says. “That’s part of how I got through U of I—through perseverance. After you lose enough times and you get tired of losing, you want to try harder. You learn to work.”
See Rick Undesser’s gold-medal championship match on YouTube.
Video description
See Undesser's gold medal championship match on YouTube.
