To quickly summarize the competition and where I placed... I got 1st in breaking and 2nd in sparring. I am particularly happy with getting 1st in breaking considering the division was the largest and most competitive I've ever competed in. I remember last year the 16 year-old division was huge. Well, the 17-37 women's blackbelt division picked up all those 16-year-olds. My only regret in breaking is I didn't use more wood, but I was nervous after the last tournament. And the breaks I did proved to be plenty. I was the only one who did all my breaks cleanly on the first try and I heard a judge say "wow" when I set up my 2-board headbutt break. (Seeing a woman do that looks more impressive than it is and gets high points.) Grandmaster Byrne even came over after and complemented my breaks, which is pretty cool... I got 2nd in sparring. I was feeling pretty good too after I dominated my first match. I hopped out to a 4-0 lead and only eased up as not to beat her 5-0 (they stop you at 5). My first match tends to set the tone; if I feel good then, I'm pretty golden for my other matches. The woman I had to spar for 1st I've been sparring since orange belt. She's got a few inches on me in height, which makes it hard but I had a strategy: don't let her extend her legs and go in for punches. Well, this all fell apart because when I went in, she'd hook me to the back of the head. As far as I've ever seen, hits to the back of the head aren't points, but the judge's saw differently. She did it twice and it completely threw me. A schoolmate on the sidelines even sarcastically yelled out, "watch out for those hook kicks to the back of the head..." also not getting why points were awarded. But anyway, end of the day, I felt good about how I sparred and I'll get her next time.
There was also a demo at the tournament. Coolest part was seeing some of the best sword people in the world perform. I recorded some of the cutting but the coolest part was the advanced masters form. They used these light blades that whistled in the air... some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. Blew me away. Here's a little bit I got from the bamboo cutting... (when I get it to load)
There was also this little yellow belt sparring. She didn't look taller than 2 feet, and looked no older than 3 and she had on these big glasses. It was the most adorable thing. It took the judges 20 minutes to let her spar though; I think they were making up rules as to ensure she not get killed. It ended up beign the cutest match ever, with a crowd around just going "awww".
So after the tournament, we headed to Ruby Tuesdays and took over a backroom with over 20 people. Then some of us headed to the hotel bar which had a live band and packed dance floor. Then after that events included getting kicked out of the lobby, playing Uno in the stairwell, watching an oldman accidentally stumble on the fire alarm while playing Uno, watching half the hotel evacuate, telling them to go back into their room which the hotel didn't bother to do, continuing the Uno game with some random dude who came out during the fire alarm and didn't get the rules, ending the Uno game after hotel guests complained we were loud, and the next day somehow convincing them to give us a substantial room discount even though several noise complaints were listed as our room. It was a crazy night.
Anyway, the tourney and the overall trip were great. Good times.
2 comments:
Sounds like fun =)
Yeah. Maybe you can come to another one sometime; I need someone to remember to video me. :)
Post a Comment