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Senior Ben Bordoley

Name: Ben BordoleySport: Judo

Belt: Second Degree Brown Belt

Hometown: Wilton, Conn.

School/Year: SFS ’09

ajor: International Politics

How did you get into judo? That’s one of the things I started when I was younger. My dad was a really good judo player; when I was really little, he used to go to a judo club and I started taking lessons for judo when I was in the fourth grade all the way up to high school. And in high school I had to drop it because there was too much going on and judo classes were two towns over. So during high school I took wrestling instead. Then when I came to Georgetown, I found out that we had surprising world-class judo, so I started coming in and I have a lot of fun with it.

Have you ever gotten an injury in judo? The worst injury I ever had was a concussion. It was actually not in competition – it was during practice. That is the only time I’ve ever been GERMed, and it’s actually a funny story. It happened over the summer when I was here taking Arabic classes; I went to judo one night and I got thrown . and landed a little bit funny on my head. I was a little bit dizzy but I thought I was OK. So I left, and tried to get back into my freshman year dorm [instead of the summer dorm]. And during the summer, they had high school kids there for camp, so their counselor comes up and is like “What are you trying to do?” and I’m like “I’m just trying to get in my room,” and he’s like, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” And I realized I don’t really know what’s going on – I know my name but I don’t know the date or what’s going on, so I was like, “You know what? I think I have a concussion; can you call GERMS?” It was pretty mild. . It was almost more surreal and funny than anything else.

How far are you from becoming a black belt? I promote really slowly because I don’t have a lot of time to go to competitions. Once you get above a certain level, the requirements for promotion get harder: You have to demonstrate that you know all the moves and names for things in Japanese and you have to take short written tests. . you also have to have a certain number of points that you get in competitions. But the competitions are on weekends, which is when it’s homework time and time for my friends. So I don’t have very many points, but I could have gotten a black belt sometime early this year if I had been doing it rigorously.

You mentioned that you took Arabic – how come you chose that over other languages? I’m interested in the Middle East as a culture and as a focus of U.S. policy – it seemed like an interesting idea to take Arabic. Also, it’s very popular in Georgetown.

Do you want to visit the Middle East, and if you did, what countries? I would like to visit all of them. I love to travel anyway.

Where have you traveled to before? I’ve been to Israel, Jordan, France, Russia and the Bahamas – I don’t know if that counts.

Where did you live your freshman year? Harbin 7. I’m actually an RA now, and one of my best friends here, I convinced him to apply to be an RA too, and he’s assigned now to Harbin 7, which was where it began – we were next-door neighbors on that floor. So it’s like full-circle.

Do you have any funny stories from freshman year? The first time I came to Georgetown, I knew there was a judo club, but I was waiting for SAC Fair to find out more about it. One day I was coming to Yates just to run or something and I saw a guy dressed in a gi [the traditional white judo uniform] and I was like “Do you do judo?” and getting all excited about it and the guy gives me a weird look and is like, “Yeah, why?” and I’m like, “Me too! I’m gonna go get my gi!” And that’s how I got into judo here at Georgetown.

Is there anyone who’s the judo joker? Possibly our goofiest member other than me is one of the lead instructors. . he’s the one with the nice big mustache. He likes to joke around a lot, and he tells a lot of funny stories. He’s actually a Georgetown Law graduate, so he’s been here a while.

Last question: Booey’s or Wisey’s? Definitely Wisey’s. Everyone’s all about the Chicken Madness, but I love the Burger Madness.

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