08/21/2025
There is a real problem with the belt ranks in kids jiu-jitsu. You see teams that are not promoting their kids because they want to keep them at the lower belt so they can get them on the podium either for personal reasons to score points for the team or to just make them look better by having more kids on the podium.
I had parents at Pans show me pictures of athletes who had won Pans already three times as a gray belt or yellow belt and had not been promoted to the next belt.
The problem is once promoted to Orange or Green belt they hardly ever get any matches at the opens. They only get matches at the major tournaments. This is not just the problem of one team if every team promoted their kids like they should then you would see as many orange and green belts at the opens as you see yellow belts.
I don’t blame the parents for wanting their kids to be able to have matches when they sign up for the opens. It’s hard when there are no other orange or green belts there but the only way to fix this is to have teams promote their kids on a more timely basis and not promote them based on how they finished at the top level competition or based on how many kids they have on the team so they need to make spots in the lower divisions.
Let me know how you think this problem can be solved.
