Ilyan Hoskins loves to practice.
Loves it so much, in fact, that he travels two hours each way to do it three or four times a week.
And all that practice paid off last month, as Hoskins brought home a bronze medal from his first international competition, the Pan American Judo Championship in early December in Lima, Peru.
The Madison native judoka – a practitioner of the Japanese martial art of judo – is also a 13-year-old seventh grader at Sennett MIddle School.
“I love to practice,” he said when asked what makes him so successful. “I saw that I needed to practice more to get better at the sport.”
Starting early
A friend of Hoskins’ dad suggested he might like judo when Hoskins was 4. At 5, he won his first state and national championships. He’s won eight more national tournaments since, despite not competing for nearly two years during the COVID pandemic.
He started out at Fight Prime in Madison, but now trains with former Georgian national champion and Olympian Gela K at his European Judo Academy in ___, Illinois, just south of Racine.
Last year, he made Team USA by virtue of a second-place finish in the under-13 47 kilogram (about 103.6 pounds) division at the Junior Olympics. That meant he got to go international for the first time.
It was a higher level of competition than he’s used to – and competitors he hadn’t seen before.
“I usually know who I’m competing against, but there in Peru, I don’t know who was competing again, so I just … had to do what I’m used to.”
He said his first match of a tournament is often a sort of warm-up.
“Usually, in my first match, I need to get used to fighting,” he said. But his first opponent in Peru, Carlos Sepulvida of Chile, was too good for that, and the match remained scoreless until there were just five seconds left, when Hoskins scored and held on to win.
Hoskins was fully warmed up and ready to go for the second match, against Mexican judoka Iker Navarro. Just about one minute in, Hoskins scored an ippon – a throw that ends the match, similar to a pin in wrestling or knockout in boxing.
In the semifinal, the tables were turned, as Brazilian Pedro Bomtempo won by ippon just 17 seconds in, on what Hoskins and his mom Ivanka said was a “questionable” decision.
Hoskins then faced fellow American Evghenii Novitchi for the bronze medal, and won by ippon with just 10 seconds left on the two-minute clock.
Mind game
Ivanka Hoskins said it’s not necessarily physical skill that makes him successful.
“He’s also very smart,” she said. “Judo, although it’s a strength sport, is always a mind game … he really likes that. Just trying to mind-fight his opponent.”
Hoskins himself said, in addition to his love of practice, he brings a winning attitude.
“I don’t get nervous at tournaments,” he said. “I don’t say I’m going to lose or anything. I say, ‘I’m going to win.’ So then I have that determination to win.”
“When he competes, I think I’m more nervous than he is,” Ivanka said.
The family commitment to drive to training and travel to competitions gets hard, Ivanka said.
“But my husband and I, we make it work,” she said. “He usually does his homework when he’s driving.”
It’s a financial strain for the families of elite competitors, as USA Judo doesn’t cover travel expenses, and only gold medalists in international competitions get their travel expenses reimbursed.
“Everything is on the parents,” Ivanka said. “It is a sport where the family pays for everything.”
Olympic dreams
Hoskins has big dreams to pay off that investment – he hopes to be the first American man to bring home an Olympic medal, which he’ll technically be old enough to do in 2028. That would be a tall order, though; to this point, he’s competed against judoka only his age. The Olympic trials would involve the highest-level fighters of any age, and only one judoka from each weight class represents the country at the Olympics. So he’s got his sights set on 2032 and beyond.
It’s not out of the question someday, though, Kelikhashvili said.
“His dedication, and the way he loves judo, and the way he’s training, I think it’s possible” to win at the Olympic level, he said.
“You have to be on top of the world” to make it that far, Hoskins said.
Long before he’ll think about that, though, another big competition is just weeks away: the Youth National Championship is coming up March 14 and 15 in Wichita, Kansas.
