Imagine juggling two elite sports and a double degree - you’d have to be crazy or a sucker for punishment.
Try telling Kelsey Francis that. If you dare.
The multiple Australian champion weightlifter has now taken up competitive judo and if her first tournament is anything to go by, she may soon need a whole new cabinet for a different style of trophy.
The Law and Commerce student took down more experienced fighters with higher belts to win the Ohuri Judo South Queensland Competition late last month.
“I’m juggling a couple of sports. I’ve been weightlifting competitively for about five years and doing judo for two years, and this was my first judo competition,” she said.
“We wanted to enter a team in the UniSport Nationals so we needed to get points to qualify, which is why I entered.”
The 21-year-old is an orange belt - third in a hierarchy of seven belts - and had to undergo some pretty serious on-the-job training in the open division where a fighter’s grading is irrelevant.
“I was going up against people with higher belts and a lot more experience so it was a bit of a learning curve,” she said.
“I lost the first fight and I felt like I was hesitant and didn’t really know what was going on.
“But I won the next two and by the last one I was definitely more aggressive and confident.’’
It was a sudden illness that paved the way for her first foray into competition judo.
After winning the Queensland U23 81kg weightlifting title earlier in the year, Francis suffered appendicitis which ruled her out of the Australian Championships where she would have been defending her national title.
With the season ending before she could return to competition, she turned her eyes to judo where she has found genuine benefits from her weightlifting background.
“It definitely helps. I train a lot with men, there aren’t a whole lot of girls that train in judo and I think weightlifting helps make it a level playing field,” she said.
“There’s the power but also the core strength is really valuable. I think people find it a lot harder to throw me than the average female judo competitor.”
Thanks to Francis’s triumph, Bond University Judo Club will now send a team to the UniSport Nationals for the first time since 2019.
And it will be a busy period for Francis who has also entered the Queensland International Open which runs in conjunction with the university games.
Officials are still finalising the rules for competitors who intend to enter both events but there’s little doubt she will be forced to have more fights across the two events.
Thankfully, being busy is nothing new for Francis. And that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
“At the moment I am focussing on both sports and seeing where they lead me. In the future I will need to make a decision one way or the other but I’m in no rush because I like both sports for different reasons,” she said.
“That can make life a bit difficult. Sometimes my studies get pushed to the backburner when they shouldn’t.
“I’m pretty busy. I do six to nine weightlifting sessions per week and then four or five martial arts sessions.”