Yes, busy weekend
I did, indeed, have a busy weekend. A busy GOOD weekend. Started on Friday with some kung fu, helping a few guys with their skills, and one to prepare for the tournament. Went pretty well. And after that, Sandra had come back in town, so we hung out for a bit. She hadn't seen the Shawshank Redemption yet, so that had to be remedied. She thought it was a good movie, which is good, because it IS a good movie. I do recommend it for anyone who has yet to see it. I still don't really get tired of watching it.

So then it was time for Saturday. And the tournament! Yes, it started in the morning (not too early, around 10:30 or so). About a mile from my place, so it wasn't too far away. We had a good showing for our academy. It started with some black belt events, so Justin competed in the solo forms competition, and I in the creative forms competition, with a sparring set (with Justin). Justin was first, and he did an excellent job, as always. He ended up tying with a karate guy, so they had to repeat the forms to determine the tie-breaker. Of course, the karate guy won, although his form was much shorter and MUCH less difficult. The problem was that every one of the judges knew his form, and none of them knew Justin's form. So they didn't really realize the difficulty differences. It's pretty standard fare for open tournaments, but just because we have to deal with it every time doesn't make it any easier. It IS frustrating to not be properly recognized. At least one of the judges came up afterwards and told Justin he thought his kata was better than the other guy's, so he judged him accordingly, but he was only one on the panel, and he could only do so much. Grr. Oh well, it happens. In my competition, Justin and I were the only ones competing, so we automatically won, but we went ahead and did the form. The judges all thought it was very good.

So the rest of our guys competed in a variety of competitions. In the forms competition, we had three guys enter for adult intermediate. There was something like six to eight guys total in their competition, and our students won first, second AND third. Yaaay! It made me feel very proud of all of them. We had other competitors that did quite well, including one six year old (about four feet tall) that is ferocious. His name is Robbie, and he annihilated the competitors in the forms competition. They all did the first set for karate/taekwondo, which is basically three moves, put into sets of two at a time, repeated four times each - basically about twelve moves or so. I put the slash in there because I think it might be the same form for both styles. That, and Robbie also took first in sparring, doing the final match against one other student of ours. It was close! It came to Robbie being down 9 to 7 in a best out of ten match. I guess he just found motivation or something, because he threw a flying side kick for his next point and kept it going at that rate until he won. It was great to watch.

And the final bit for forms was the grand champion competition. The first place winners from each category in adult black belt forms competed. Justin and I took the sparring set up for competition, and ended up performing it rather well. As it turns out, we were second to last, and the last was the karate guy who beat Justin. We lost to him by a tenth of a point. And we had a lot of people come up afterwards and tell us they thought we should have won. Even a couple who thought we HAD won, and were surprised when we told them otherwise. The grand champion prize was $300, alas. We did what we could, and that's all you can do sometimes.

Sparring was after all that, and I competed, although Justin did not (still recovering a bit from surgery). I still have issues with point sparring, since I'm used to taking a hit to move in and do more damage. Or grabbing kicks, which usually ends up getting the other guy a point. It happened AGAIN this time. I went up against a guy who had a lot of experience and very quick legs. I pretty much got spanked, although it wasn't a hand to the rear, but a foot to the face. Several times. I did get a nice reminder for it:






- posted by Pootenheimer @ 10:37 PM | 1 comments