TheJSC

Well known exhibitor Andy Baker passed away a few weeks before the 2025 BKKS National show took place. Andy’s nephew Dan Adams with the cooperation of the Society led a tribute around the vat exhibiting Andy’s fish for the last time to say farewell. It was held while judging was still in progress so the judges were still on the inside of the centre ring while friends and family assembled on the other side.

This post must begin with hearty congratulations to our National Show Committee (NSC) for organising a show to remember. Apart from judging, the JSC’s role in the National is to provide a JSC representative to that committee and Head Bencher for the show. The National is also the training ground for JSC Trainees, but for several years there hasn’t been enough to make a dent in the NSC’s workload. But times have changed. This year we contributed 3 extra bodies,…

An initiative by the North East Koi Club to train their members took place on the 8th June at the premisise of Alan Cunningham one of their members.  As stated on their Facebook page “We take a professional approach to our show, with the care and health of our exhibitors koi being the number one priority at all times. For this reason, all members of our show benching team must undertake and pass the benching, health check, handing and netting…

A large team of BKKS judges participated in the international jury of the  European Koi Show presented by the Koi Club Nederland on the 25th May at Oldenzaal. The Brit team comprised of Gary Pritchard, Carol McCall, Tony Sheffield, Kieron Burns and Gary Hillier. In keeping with the tradition of International shows our team presented a Friendship Trophy on behalf of the BKKS. The winner was a size 7 Aka Matsuba exhibited by Freddy Roolvink. “An Aka Matsuba Size 7…

One of the oldest, independant koi clubs in the UK, the Yorkshire Koi Society (YKS) held a photo/garden show at the end of May, begining of June (31st May/1st June) at the premises of their members. JSC Chairman Allan Tait was the judge that they invited to adjudicate.  Although the list of entries was relatively small the quality was high.  Allan’s results were recorded at the time but the prize giving will be at the club’s next meeting where Allan will…

“I was arrested/detained at Schipol on the way home for overstaying in Holland, which surprised even me. On entry at Schipol they stamped my passport as 2024 so it looked like I was there over a year. Eventually it was cleared up and I had to have a special stamp on my passport lol. Picture explains it all.” Gary Pritchard.

This year there were four BKKS judges invited to the show. However, two, Christine Woolger and Bernie Woollands were there as ZNA judges. The other two were Carol McCall and Gary Hazely who took care of selecting and presenting the BKKS Friendship Trophy. There was a very slight delay to the prize giving due to a set-up fault with the public address system which was fixed by our Carol in a few minutes. BKKS judges like most koi keepers have…

Wednesday 16th April was the date for a talk about the Koromo show class given by Bernie Woollands. Bernie is becoming a bit of a regular speaker there. The talk was inspired by a result in this category by BKKS Chairman Rob Whittle at the Crouch Valley Open Show in 2022. A period of intense research followed. Along the way he picked up some ‘novel’ Japanese phrases not usually associated with koi appreciation, but nevertheless applicable. The Koromo show class…

While other members of the JSC were at their Spring Meeting, Gary Hillier was at the Worthing Section giving two talks to the Worthing members. It wasn’t a clash of dates, the JSC had changed their date and Gary was already committed. His first talk covered his visit to the USA in March 2020. Originally he was out there to judge a show, but while he was in the air the show got cancelled due to the emergence of Covid…