Get Up & Fight: The Memoir of Rena Rusty Kanokogi, The Mother of Women's Judo

Rusty was a fighter--for women, judo, and equality. Her career in the sport spanned more than fifty years, as a competitor, pioneer, national and international coach and referee, advocate, commentator and promoter.Early in her career, Rusty defied the rules of gender by competing with--and winning against--men. Too aggressive for the women's groups at the Y, Rusty was considered an exception to the male-dominated judo community; her boisterous energy and passion were tolerated, until she began to win. When she was swiftly banned from the competition arena based solely on her gender, she vowed to do all she could to ensure this would never happen to a female competitor again.In her quest for women's inclusion in the sport, Rusty founded, organized and financed the first Women's World Judo Championships, held at Madison Square Garden in New York City on November 29 and 30, 1980, putting women's judo on the map and earning the United States the international women's level competition status required to qualify for inclusion in the Olympic Games.Rusty served as the USA Women's Judo Coach from 1974 to 1996, bringing women's judo to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea for the very first time. Rusty, along with her husband, Ryohei Kanokogi, founded the Kyushu Judo Club in Brooklyn, New York, teaching students from all over the world, many of which went on to place in the Pan American Games, World Championships, British Open, Maccabiah Games, Pacific Rim Games and the Olympics.Rusty served as the President of New York State Judo, from 1991 to 2009, was a member of the NY2012 Olympic Bid Committee, was a delegate to the International Olympic Committee meeting in Singapore, 2005, and served as Trustee and Vice President for twelve years with the Women's Sports Foundation. She also served as a consultant with Tokai University, in Japan, the Japanese Association of Women's Sports, and was the Vice President, Legal Lives, of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, and a judo commentator for NBC at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece, and a media panelist for the International Judo Federation in Cairo, Egypt in 2005.In her fifty-year career, Rusty taught at least 100,000 people at colleges including the Pratt Institute, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Brooklyn College, as well as countless elementary and high schools. All the while, Rusty continued to be an advocate for all athletes in judo and Title IX, the 1972 civil rights law for gender equality in education, campaigning and litigating for women's judo inclusion in the Olympic Games and every level of competition. She has been recognized as the mother of women's judo for her inarguable contribution to the sport.In her life, Rusty rose to the rank of seventh-degree black belt--the first woman ever to do so. In 2008 she was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette from the Emperor's Order of Japan for her lifelong contribution to the promotion of judo. Her ashes are interred in the Kanokogi Samurai family grave site in Kumamoto, Japan, marked with the epitaph American Samurai.