December 5, 2021, Pompton Lakes Resident and North Jersey Judo member Ramon Hernandez Junior (Junior) wins the -81kg Black Belt Elite Division at the Northeast Judo Championships hosted by Camal Judo of Totowa, NJ. Camal Judo has been hosting this event for over 20 years now and the event was granted USA Judo Roster Points the Judo NGB out of the Olympic Training Center. The event had a nice healthy turnout to say the least.
In the finals Junior competed against 2021 USA Judo Senior National Champion Nicolas Yonezuka. With seconds left Junior scores a ½ point on Yonezuka and kept his lead with 11 seconds left. Two weeks earlier at the Dallas Invitational Junior was ahead in his second match with a ½ point and 14 seconds left with an opponent from the DC area Edwin Vallejo scores a full point throw on Junior. Junior wasn’t going to allow lighting to strike twice with that same situation. With Yonezuka he kept his lead, played conservative and was awarded the win.
Junior will continue training hard to help prepare him to compete in the Pan American Continental Opens in South America in 2022.