Matt will have to fill you in on his results as I was officiating in another ring at the time.
I believe he did pretty well and placed in a tough division for his rank.
As for myself: I was pleased with myself in that myself did not let me down and muff something up
I competed in hapkido form, but there was only one other competing team in the advanced division. Team consists of person doing technique and person acting as what the JMAs call "uke", or person receiving technique.
The competition requires the team to do 10 techniques from the same "set" (or type of techniques).
I was the one doing technique for my team. We did "Bok Hap Soo", or "combination techniques." This set of techniques assume the original technique you attempt meets too much resistance, so you change directions and go with another technique.
We took first place. More importantly, I think we did a really nice job -- I'm pretty sure I bent my knees/got low enough on the throws, everything seemed to be smooth and well paced. My partner fell well and made big "BOOMS" that reverberated in the gym
I did end up forgetting to do one follow-up we had practiced in which I drop my knee to the receiver's neck as I drop my weight into a goose-neck wrist lock, and just went with a punch instead. Not a big deal - a punch is fine for a follow up, just a personal disappointment because I really LIKE the follow up I had intended to do better than just another punch. No minus points from my score, as any effective follow up is allowed and judges have no expectations for followups other than you do one without hesitation.
Two other "special" (something other than just a punch or stomp kick) followups we had practiced went really well, really smooth.
One was flopping onto my partner like going for an Americana, but with an armbar by slipping a forearm under his elbow, following a hip throw after a standing arm bar across my chest is "resisted."
The other was just a standard armbar after a major outer reaping throw (what JMA call "Osoto Gari" throw), but it was really smooth: pretty much instantly dropped into it as soon as partner was thrown (I use that one a lot).
Next event for me was board breaking competition.
Judges say "go" and competitors must execute the break without hesitation, without any slow-motion lining up motions, etc. One swing -- you either break or you don't.
Compulsory breaks were:
knife hand strike (one board, supported)
punch (one board, supported)
front leg sidekick (two boards, supported)
Then the scoring round I chose (from a choice of four options):
roundhouse (one board, supported)
spinning heel kick (one board, unsupported "speed break")
jump back turning kick (two boards, supported)
All my breaks were successful, so I took first place for my division.
The last competition for me (after a long day of officiating) was point sparring, 2nd/3rd dan division.
Rules are: point style, but match goes a full three minutes (no "winner" at 3 points, or whatever). Two points for head kicks. More or less ITF rules, i.e., hand strikes allowed to head.
Even though at 39 I am eligible for the "old man's" er.. I mean Senior Division (for age 35 and up), I still like to compete with "the kids"
Only two other 2nd/3rd dan black belts decided to compete. I'm guessing because one of them was DeRay Ivie, an extremely talented 3rd dan trained by my buddy Master Tim Wall of the U.S. Chung Do Kwan. DeRay usually beats his opponents by 10-15 points
The kid (well, he is like 25, 26 now) is quick and has very good technique. As his instructor is a good friend of mine, I've known DeRay since he started when he was something like 14 years old.
The other guy in our division was Ted Ivie (DeRay's cousin), a 2nd dan I have also known since he was a kid. I sat on Ted's testing panel when he went to 1st dan -- part of his test was to spar me (who was fresh, having sat on the panel) while he was exhausted (having just finished most of a first-dan test
)
As we are all friends, we talked it over and decided since I had sparred DeRay at the last tournament (he beat me in a close match by about 2 points), that we would give DeRay the bye and me and Teddy would go first.
Ted fought a great match. It was close, but I came out with more points and went up against DeRay for the 1st/2nd place match.
DeRay and I fought a great, exciting match. The score was tied in the last seconds of the match.
DeRay threw a head kick which I slipped (by about four inches, as per a photograph and what a few spectators saw
) and I instantly bridged the gap and countered with a punch, but the judges saw things differently so I happily congratulated him on his first place and was happy with my second place, believing that I had fought a great match against a great opponent.
Point sparring matches just go that way, sometimes: Things move fast and judges have to call 'em like they think they saw 'em.
All in all, I was very happy with how I did for the day. Really pleased. My instructor got distracted by someone during my hapkido form, so he wasn't able to give me any feedback on that, but he said I did well in my sparring matches. I value his opinion on how I did more than any trophies.
I have a CD with some pictures of the tournament but not sure how I should go about getting them up where you can see them.
(even though some of my breaks the form doesn't look as nice as I would prefer, I'll still post 'em if I can figure out how to go about doing that).
