Anyone going?
- Thread starter ATC
- Start date
No, but given the prices vs what Vegas charges, I can see the attraction of going to CA.
- Thread Starter
- #4
Yeah, that is why we did not do the JKI. That and my kids were injured. But none of us did. We took some kids to a local tourny right in our back yard. We may only do one more local after this one in prep for the US Open next year.
Historically, the CA Open is one of the worst tournaments every year. I have not been for a couple of years now, but back when we did attend (04, 05 and perhaps 06) the following sights and sounds were not uncommon:
1) Rings of very odd dimensions such as 5 X 7
2) Rings of very small dimensions such as 4 X 4
3) Full grown adult male black belts fighting in those 4 X 4 rings while 6 year old yellow belts are fighting in 7 X 7 rings
4) Such incredible shortages of referees that calls over the PA were "If anyone out there in the stands wants to come down and referee, please come to the head table"
5) Such incredible shortages of referees that often matches are scored by just 1 corner judge with a pencil and paper
6) Calls to holding area and then 4+ hours of waiting before fighting
7) Opening ceremonies and demos that just go on and on and on until you want to shoot yourself
Bottom line, in my opinion, the only tournament in Southern California that you will find that is worse than the CA Open is Yin's Gold Cup.
Now, with all that being said, because my Samantha is trying to get some referee experience under her belt, she will be there tomorrow reffing. It will be just her 2nd time as a ref and I expect that the general experience level of refs will be about the same as hers, which is minimal.
I will not be there.
Good luck to those that are.
1) Rings of very odd dimensions such as 5 X 7
2) Rings of very small dimensions such as 4 X 4
3) Full grown adult male black belts fighting in those 4 X 4 rings while 6 year old yellow belts are fighting in 7 X 7 rings
4) Such incredible shortages of referees that calls over the PA were "If anyone out there in the stands wants to come down and referee, please come to the head table"
5) Such incredible shortages of referees that often matches are scored by just 1 corner judge with a pencil and paper
6) Calls to holding area and then 4+ hours of waiting before fighting
7) Opening ceremonies and demos that just go on and on and on until you want to shoot yourself
Bottom line, in my opinion, the only tournament in Southern California that you will find that is worse than the CA Open is Yin's Gold Cup.
Now, with all that being said, because my Samantha is trying to get some referee experience under her belt, she will be there tomorrow reffing. It will be just her 2nd time as a ref and I expect that the general experience level of refs will be about the same as hers, which is minimal.
I will not be there.
Good luck to those that are.
Last went in 08 went 05-08...Horrible...They had good fights but the frustration level at this tournament is very high...Hope they do a better Job!!!
- Thread Starter
- #8
Well here is the update. Looks like there is no feed back asked for or given after this tourney.
1. Rings still weird, 5x5 and 6x6 rings only.
2. 3 to 4 hour wait times in holding when called.
3. Registering and putting yourself in a weight category meant nothing as they did not pre match you and made up the brackets on the fly in holding.
4. Since no brackets there were no match numbers.
5. All brackets were only 4 competitors. So even if your weight class had lets sat 8 people they broke that into 2 division with 4 people in each So everyone medaled. 1st, 2nd, and two 3rd places.
6. Refs were the worst. Very trigger happy, scoring with the wrong trigger, Scoring of phantom kicks and arm kicks. One match was 38-6. Not sure how when all rounds were 50 seconds long. Yep that was not a mistake 50 second rounds
7. 50 second rounds (I know but I had to make this a point all its own.
I could go on but that is more than enough. Bad, bad, bad is all I got to say. I did not like it one bit.
On a personal note. My son took Silver. He lost BUT, he is only 11 and weighs 81 pounds and had to fight against 13 year olds in the 90 to 100 and something weight division that they made up in holding. He held his own though. Lost 12 - 8 but 3 of his scores went to the wrong side. He did a triple kick that apparently had all 3 points score but for the other guy. Kind of funny when you see one kid kicking and the point ring up for the kid that is just standing there. Not to mention all the points that did not ring up that should have.
The tournament brought in 1100 competitors. With that kind of turnout you would think they would do a much better job. This is the 18th time doing this thing, why no feed back? Why are things just as MangoMan stated they were 5 or 6 years ago. If I have my way I will not be going back.
1. Rings still weird, 5x5 and 6x6 rings only.
2. 3 to 4 hour wait times in holding when called.
3. Registering and putting yourself in a weight category meant nothing as they did not pre match you and made up the brackets on the fly in holding.
4. Since no brackets there were no match numbers.
5. All brackets were only 4 competitors. So even if your weight class had lets sat 8 people they broke that into 2 division with 4 people in each So everyone medaled. 1st, 2nd, and two 3rd places.
6. Refs were the worst. Very trigger happy, scoring with the wrong trigger, Scoring of phantom kicks and arm kicks. One match was 38-6. Not sure how when all rounds were 50 seconds long. Yep that was not a mistake 50 second rounds
7. 50 second rounds (I know but I had to make this a point all its own.
I could go on but that is more than enough. Bad, bad, bad is all I got to say. I did not like it one bit.
On a personal note. My son took Silver. He lost BUT, he is only 11 and weighs 81 pounds and had to fight against 13 year olds in the 90 to 100 and something weight division that they made up in holding. He held his own though. Lost 12 - 8 but 3 of his scores went to the wrong side. He did a triple kick that apparently had all 3 points score but for the other guy. Kind of funny when you see one kid kicking and the point ring up for the kid that is just standing there. Not to mention all the points that did not ring up that should have.
The tournament brought in 1100 competitors. With that kind of turnout you would think they would do a much better job. This is the 18th time doing this thing, why no feed back? Why are things just as MangoMan stated they were 5 or 6 years ago. If I have my way I will not be going back.
You can only control what you can control. We've all entered events that end up being an unpleasant experience and no doubt will again. Just remember, even though experiences can be bad, there's no such thing as bad experience unless you dismiss lessons learned. They are what they are and learn from it. Your son is 11 and and faced 13 year olds. That's a big difference at that age. He represented well and should be proud. Focus on that and give him a high five!
Yea ATC but here is the bigger question why are 1100 competitors going to a bad tournament. USAT barely can make that at Nationals. If people would stop going tournament directors would be force to amke them better, but since they are getting 1100 people paying probaly 100 plus entry of family member. They are making probaly 75,000 off of this thing. MONEY MONEY MONEY hungry GM's and not caring about quality
- Thread Starter
- #11
All great points,
However we did not have to spend 10 hours on the road and hotel expenses to learn those lessons. We could have done that closer to home and for a lot less. There are many local tournaments close to home every week.
When we plan on traveling to something it would be nice to get a little more that what we could have stayed home for. 4 and 3 people brackets when there were enough in each division to have multiple matches does not make sense to travel for experience. If there were not multiples of 4 in a bracket then they would do 3 or less. 4 was the goal but there were times when they did 3. We had one girl that had 6 in her bracket, so the powers that be made 3 brackets of 2. Why do that. Just give 2 girls a bye and make a normal 6 person bracket. This way you can have multiple fights, not just one and one that may be lopsided at that.
Like I stated there is more to it then what I simply listed and some lessons are not worth the time to learn them, especially when those same lessons can be learned cheaper, with less headache, less time, and closer to home.
As for my son, I was the one that requested him to move up a division for better competition. I don't worry about him fighting big, faster, stronger. That is how he gets better and can handle it. He even asked for it. We use local tournaments to prepare for the major ones like US Open and Nationals. He knows we are proud of him and we tell him that. I only was posting my personal info about how my son did and why. The only complaint I had was the judging of the match. But then again I am a biased Dad also.
There are bad tournaments that we know of and still go to, but they don't cost the parents a couple of hundred bucks and 10 hours round trip travel time either. But as you stated even that is a lesson in itself.
I do think that the tournament could be a great one if only they did a few things differently. This is why I don't think they take feedback or even ask for it. This thing had the potential to be great. Even if they only fixed the bracket making. That one thing would have sped up the hold area process and the tournament as a whole.
I did get to meet a few people that read this forum but do not post. Kind of funny when someone comes up to you and ask if you are ATC or California-Steel. Nice guys, lets hope they start posting.
- Thread Starter
- #12
Yes Terry you are correct. They are most likely making some good money. But I have no problem with that. They put forth the effort to create and promote it so to make money is OK.
However you can make it better and make even more money just by doing a few things that would take no extra cash to do. They already have a website promoting the tournament, so how hard would it be to have the same person create a one page feedback form to have filled out by participants. That there would at least bring to there attention the top one or two issue that they could improve on.
And also, to get 1100 people in the L.A. area is pretty easy after 18 years. L.A. is saturated with tons of TKD schools. Most of the schools there were from the L.A. greater area. There were some schools like ours that traveled but the L.A. and surrounding areas were the greater schools.
All I ask is that tournament promoters request feed back and make a single change each year from the feed back to make things better. You will never have a perfect tournament but you can have one that most people feel pretty good about.
I did like the venue where the tournament was held. The Home Depot Center is a nice place. It was held at the Velodrome where they do the bike races. We even got to see some racers come in a practice. That was pretty cool to see in person. You don't realize how steep the banked curves are from TV. The angle had to be 70 degrees or more at the curves, quite impressive to see.
It's the incestuous nature of things, especially in So Cal. KS Choi takes a lot of students to a bunch of tournaments throughout the year around So Cal and he expects in return that the hosts of those events will bring lots of students to his tournament each year in return. And as you saw yesterday, they do.
I wish that you had asked before you signed up, what the general consensus was of the event. Perhaps you would have saved yourself a few hundred bucks.
Not that Samantha would have done any better than the refs that were there keeping score, but just to let you know, she was dismissed after poomse and told that her reffing services would not be needed for the remainder of the day. Too bad really because she really had fun reffing at the JKI and was looking forward to doing it again.
As I understand it, most of the refs that were used were from Aguila's TKD. Unfortunately, my experience with them is that they will absolutely show a bias in favor of their fighters. That might explain many of the "phantom points" you saw, especially if those points were going up for members of the Aguila's "Fighting Team".
Team X sent a few of our younger kids and had some pretty good results. We have a young man (Age 7) visiting us from Denmark, Frederik Olsen, who went to this event. He won gold and if you watch this video, you will understand why.
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Good heavens that young fellow is a monster in the ring! Thanks for posting that, he was awesome to watch :asian:
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Korean supported tournaments in LA always draw big attendance. This tournament is notoriously bad. It is always just a money grab!!!! Always the worst!!!
The best LA Area tournaments.
Jimmy Kim Long Beach--usually Sept/Oct 900-1200 competitors
Mayor's Cup- Camarillo---Usually first week of August---600-900 competitors
If Tim Thackery has his UCLA Tournament in January it is also a great tournament.
The best LA Area tournaments.
Jimmy Kim Long Beach--usually Sept/Oct 900-1200 competitors
Mayor's Cup- Camarillo---Usually first week of August---600-900 competitors
If Tim Thackery has his UCLA Tournament in January it is also a great tournament.
- Thread Starter
- #17
I will have to watch later today when I get home from work. We block YT and other social site at work, and I am tired of searching for proxy servers that also get blocked.
I look forward to the video. I love watching the good young ones.
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- Thread Starter
- #18
AWESOME!!! I LOVE IT. I wish the US would allow kids to fight with head contact before 8.
I did not start teaching my son and daughter to go to the head until 8. Wish I started earlier. We now start them in our dojang at 7 but I think we can even go down to 6.
Thanks for posting that.
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