Last weekend, I had the honor of attending the Fight for the Cure tournament in Riverside and seeing Becky Scott on the medals and on the Warrior Spirit award. It was bittersweet to share memories of Becky with other judoka in attendance. Some of the younger people did not know Becky as well, or maybe not at all. I didn’t want to take a lot of time during the tournament to give a long speech because I’ve found that people seldom pay attention under those circumstances and Becky was someone who deserved attention.
World Sambo Champion, Elite Judo Player and Coach
As happens with many judo players, we met at a tournament – in 1973, to be exact – shared a room at many tournaments and camps after that and became lifelong friends. I was 15, Becky was 18, she was still Becky Trussel then, and we had both come to the tournament without any teammates. She walked up, tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, wanna warm up with me?”
For the next 11 years, we were both competing on the national and international circuit in judo. We both won gold medals at the U.S. Olympic Festival. I got a message that night that my 11-month-old baby was in the hospital and left on the next flight. The next day, someone showed up at my house with my judo gi, gold medal and everything else I had left behind. Federal Express didn’t exist back then. Becky, my roommate, asked around and found who at the tournament lived in San Diego, packed up all my stuff and made sure Joe Ciokon, the military team manager, dropped it off for me when he got home.
Becky was a medalist many times in the U.S. national judo championships, represented the U.S. at the British Open and was a coach for the junior world team. Since one sport wasn’t enough for her, she took up sambo wrestling and won gold medals in the Panamerican and World championships.
Becky coached at Welcome Mat judo club for decades, along with her husband, Steve Scott. She told me, “One way to look at it is that Steve and I never had any kids of our own, and the other way is that we had hundreds of them, all of the kids who went through Welcome Mat. To be honest, if we’d had children, we probably wouldn’t have been able to spend the many thousands of dollars and hours that we did helping other kids.”
Becky and me doing matwork drills, back in the day.
What about her warrior spirit?
For many years, Becky was in the same division as Christine Pennick, who was a bronze medalist in the world championships, so, to make the U.S. team, she needed to be better than #3 in the world. Many people switched to easier divisions, but Becky refused. She embodied the attitude, “I don’t want it to be easier, I want to be better.”
Becky and I were in different weight divisions, so we only ended up fighting twice. Once was at the sambo nationals for grand champion. We’d both won our respective weight divisions and she beat me on points fair and square and became grand champion.
The other time was in a local tournament where they had combined the women’s weight divisions. Becky and I fought in the finals. Back then, the judges could hold up both flags to signify a draw. The referee also called it a draw. They had to look it up in the rule book and under the rules of the time, if it was a draw, you fought the whole match over right then and there. We had just poured out everything we had for five minutes and when they told us that we both looked at the officials like “You have GOT to be kidding me!”
After nine minutes of all-out competition, I went into a throw, Becky stuck her arm out to post and dislocated her elbow, so I won. As she was in pain and getting taped up she told me, “Don’t feel bad about it, I should have taken the fall, but darn it, I hate to lose.”
Beyond Sport
Becky went to work right out of high school and would tell me that she could not understand how I could keep going to school to get more degrees. When she retired from competition, years after me, and went back to school to study physical therapy, I could not refrain from calling up and giving her a hard time, which she took in good humor. Like most elite athletes, she’d had her share of injuries and subsequent physical therapy. She went into her studies planning to do sports medicine but it was in her required rotation with elderly patients that she found her calling. She spent her career working primarily in nursing homes, and limited her sports medicine to assisting at tournaments.
I’ll never forget that call I got from Becky last year. She said, “I want you to hear it from me. I’ve been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and I’ve been in the medical field too long to not know how this story ends. “ Never one to back down from hard things, Becky planned her own funeral and burial because she knew how hard it was going to be for Steve and didn’t want him to have to do it.
Don’t get the idea that Becky just lay down and waited to die when she found out she had cancer. She took every medication, did every therapy. After multiple strokes, she was back in physical therapy, but on the patient side. In the end, she decided her time had come. She refused food or water and, after 30 days (!), passed away in her own bed with Steve by her side.
All Strong Women Should have a Friend Like Becky
Becky and I competed through the 1970s and 1980s. When we began judo, there was no law giving women equal rights to compete in sports. Our mothers couldn’t even get a credit card or a bank loan in their own names, it had to be their husband’s. A lot of people, both men and women, thought we should not be trying to compete, not be in “men’s space” and know our place. When we inevitably got injured, as most elite athletes do, there were plenty of people around to discourage us, tell us we were trying to do too much.
I cannot count the number of times, in practice, or when I was ready to quit because of injury, divorce or just when I was tired and didn’t want to go another round that Becky would say to me, “Get back on the mat.” It was the same with me. We’d be at the end of practice, dead tired and I’d say, “Come on, Becky, I want to do 50 more reps of that new armbar drill.” She would laugh, groan, “Do I have to?” but she always got back on the mat.
There are some people who, when you are successful, you’re a little reluctant to call them because you never know how they’ll take it, if they’ll be jealous or take it as bragging. Everyone needs a friend like Becky – whether it was winning a gold medal, getting a Ph.D or landing a contract, she couldn’t have been happier if she had done it herself. She was there in the bad times, too. When my husband, Ron, died, it was all a blur, but I know that one of the first calls I made was to Becky.
Becky never gave up – in a fight, on a friend, or in life. I miss her every day.
