Well, not quite hot off the press, as we finished up our part around 1:30p, then kind of messed around for a while, then took naps, and are only now starting to recover.
This was the tourney put on by the ISKF Rocky Mountain Region, and it was held, as for the past two years, at the Lone Tree Rec Center, where Katherine and my dojo is located. It’s all-Shotokan karate, with folks coming from all over the Rocky Mountains to compete.
The first part of the morning was Dan examinations (i.e., exams for degrees of black belt). There were twenty-odd folks involved, half of them browns vying to go up to black, the rest blacks looking for a higher degree. Some great kata, kihon (basics), and, later, kumite (sparring).
After that, and once the rest of the family had joined me, the various kids groups competed. Katherine was in a busy field. She didn’t do great at her kata and got knocked out of that competition early, even after being called back to fill in the brackets against another opponent. Not surprisingly, she was fairly upset about that.
It looked that was going to continue that way in sparring (which, for her level / age is a series of defined moves attacking, then defending). She lost her first match, but as the competition continued, she won her second, then her third. We think that last was to help decide who was going to get the bronze, so she knocked her opponent there out of the running for it.
About another hour watching other groups, then it was my turn.
The good news is — woot! Two medals!
The bad news is, my kata competition was against two other people for my section, total, and my sparring against one other. And I ended up with a silver and a bronze, so you can do the math.
Kata was first. Rather than head-to-head competition, since there were only three we went straight to points. The first woman did okay, scoring 21 points (5 judges, giving scores for an average performance of 7.0). She did one of the top two katas in our bracket, Heian Godan.
The next woman, Mary, who’s in my class and is a rank (within purple) below me, also did Heian Godan, getting a bit higher score.
That’s sometimes been a troublesome kata for me — a lot of places to make mistakes. So I did the next one up, Tekki Shodan. That’s the one I’ve been practicing most (for my brown test in May). I figured I would both do better at it, and (maybe) score some points for difficulty.
Well, I ended up with 21 points, too. So the first lady and I had a tie-breaker round. She did Heian Nidan, a low-level kata. She did okay, scoring like a 20.8. I considered whether I should do the same kata (which I thought I could do better with), or do Heian Godan, and, again, try for a bit of extra on difficulty.
I did the latter, rushed it, committed some technical gaffe that required a judges conference to determine how much to dock me, and ended up with a 20.4. So … bronze.
Sparring was next, and was Mary and me. She’s highly precise in her sparring; me, not always. Not sure where I lacked (possibly my footwork), but of the four judges ranking that, one voted for me and the other three for Mary.
So … two medals, two last places, but … still fun. Frustrating, but fun.
Back to class on Tuesday, for the both of us.