I decided fairly late into the process to go to tournament with my Sensei and Todd. Normally I would have planned ahead by a couple more weeks and Sensei would have better numbers for the organizers. Then we would have probably planned our weekend better, but such is life.
We ended up leaving at 5 am, driving three and half hours and walking into registration at the last minute. We were still dressing up when the first staging was occurring. Thankfully there was around two hundred competitors so the little kids took up most of the first hour.
The tourney was in a high school gym and the floor space was broken into 6 "rings". The entire time I was there, except for the final grand champion fights, every ring was in use. Totally a 6 ring circus and incredibly well organized.
I registered for four events. Black belt kata (men's open), Black Belt kata (men over 45), Kumite black belt men open and Kumite black belt men over 35 heavy weight.
For my first kata I got an 8.5 which didn't place me due to the amount of competitors. My second kata, which I thought was great was an average of 8.4 I think. Still not good enough to place.
We had to wait around a bit for Kumite so Reed and I thought we'd warm up during which he punched me in the mouth while we were moving fast. No damage, but I thought I was going to go into competition with Kim Kardashian lips for a minute, hah!
Our open group of men turned out to be the friendliest folks. We got chatting and laughing, but when it was fight time everyone was very serious. I liked that vibe quite a bit. It relaxed the atmosphere. Todd told me later that the low color belts had a lot of testosterone. We didn't seem to have it in our crowd.
I honestly felt that I wouldn't be competitive due to the lack of experience in the last fifteen years, but to my surprise I won my first two matches. I lost the third and figured it was no big deal. I had my equipment off and got surprised when they called me again. The single elimination thing really threw me off. So I got another match in and lost that one and was finally out. However out of a group of 12 guys I ended up fourth! What the heck!?
Micheal and Me. Not elegant.
Mr. Rice and Me. This is the one that ended my reign.
The next kumite was black belt men over 35 and and heavy weight. We all asked what the weight cut off was and they said it was our preference. What? Finally an old timer said that the cut off was 175 lb. Well we definitely all met and exceeded that.
My first and only match was with Eric, the guy that ended up as grand champion. It wasn't much of a contest. I did a 0-3. I felt that I got one point, but the judge was a AAUW guy and sorting out the action was so weird. He never stopped us and both Eric and I got confused because we would reset and he would say "I didn't say yame." So we'd launch as fast we could and the first person would get the point. Sigh.
Eric and me.
My Sensei, Reed ended up in the grand champion round so we stayed pretty late. We stopped for dinner on the way back and I ended up getting home at 9. A long day.
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