Congrats
to Kaitlyn for taking first place in weapons at the AKATO Invitational
tournament
I am thrilled when our
students do good at tournaments. At the
outset I must state that we are not a tournament focused school; this year we only
went to three, and I’m proud of the all of the students who participate in
them. We participated in three because it
gives our students chances to test themselves in a venue outside of our school,
yet I’m not going to subject my students to the circus.
I forget who I heard this name
“The Circus” (when referring to “Open” tournaments) from but the last time couple of times we (as a school) went
to an open tournament the name fit. We
saw people throwing swords into the air only to catch them as they screamed
KIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!
People were twirling their swords between their fingers as others were
hooping and a hollering as they back flipped and landed in the splits. Seriously, I even saw one guy actually squat down
in front of the head referee (like he was going to the bathroom) where he then reached
behind himself to toss his kama upwards in between his legs only to catch it
again with the same hand in front of this crotch. Seeing this kind of behavior, I thought I’m
going to lose more students than have students who want to compete in these tournaments so now we
only go to three tournaments where are students are competing apples to apples.
The first tournament is the
Monica Lopez Cancer Benefit tournament, which all of the proceeds go to a
family whom cancer has touched and impacted.
The second is the Hearts for Honduras tournament where all of the
proceeds go to help fund a mission trip to Honduras. The last is the biggest, which is the AKATO
Invitational Tournament. In all three we
compete against other like-minded schools so our students are competing apples
to apples instead of against performance artists. Now let me be clear here I'm not saying these performance artists aren't skilled or talented. I just don't find anything martial "of or relating to war, war like" in someone squatting like they are going to the bathroom and tossing a toy up between their legs, or someone throwing their demo sword in the air catching it and posing to scream their head off and call attention to themselves. We can't compete with that cause I won't teach my students to do that.
At the 2017 AKATO Invitational
tournament several of our students entered in the Kobudo (weapons)
division. Because it was a small
division they lumped our kids into the adult division. So Kaitlyn (10 yrs old and a red belt),
Kennan (8 yrs old and a 3rd brown), Gabriel (10 yrs old and a red
belt), and Kimberly (14 yrs old and a black belt) ended up all competing
against four adults three of which were black belts and one red belt.
Kaitlyn and Kimberly |
Good job Kaitlyn you represented Hidden Sword well. While Kaitlyn did beat out adults in this division she did go on to medal, or place, in both sparring and empty hand kata competing against other juniors that were her rank and age.
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