Gang,
I wanted to congratulate Matt on a strong showing at his first tournament and Doug on another strong showing. The tournament was not huge, as I'd hoped it was but there was a significant adult intermediate division for sparring in which Doug and Matt competed. And when I say significant, I don't just mean there were enough people, I mean there were some big dudes in that division. Matt held his own and scored some points to come in fourth in sparring, even after taking a direct-hit front kick right to the groin from a black belt WTF Tae Kwon Do competitor that landed him on his butt and drew a sympathetic gasp from the whole room. Doug kept his eyes open and deployed some quick handwork against a couple guys who appeared to primarily want to kick to muscle his way up to second place, losing first due in large part to a tremendous reach advantage on the part of his competitor. Against intimidating and sometimes hard-hitting adversaries you guys kept your cool and fought hard to make a good impression. Speaking of sparring, there was a weapons-sparring division and Doug just happened to have brought along some of his fiberglass-core sparring swords, which made their way into use for the adult intermediate division. Big surprise here, former sabre-fencer Matt took away a first place in this division. In empty-hand forms, we were the only school to field any adult intermediate competitors so Matt and Doug competed with each other for first and second. I don't recall who got what in the weapons division (I believe Matt took first) so one of you guys chime in and lemme know.
As far as my own performance, the day went better than I expected. There were no adult black belt competitors who wanted to compete in sparring by the end of the day (which was a drag because at the beginning of the day it looked like 5 or 6 planned to) so they simply combined me in with the teen black belt division, where youth and vigor proved the better that day. In short, I lost each match by a single point after starting with a significant lead. What can I say? I shoulda pressed the attack a bit more. In empty-hand forms I took first place with Star Form sections 1-3 (so don't let me hear anybody claim they need to know the fourth leg to have an edge in competition..). I also jumped in at the last minute to the weapons division with Matt's sword and improvised a fairly circular set and netted me a first place, some raised-eyebrows, and a "wow" from one of the judges while scoring. So that was fun.
All in all, we had a good day. I got to judge some good forms and good matches. And we all got a bit of experience to learn form for next time (eg - Brian needs to take his own dang advice and stay aggressive).
-B
