The results are in

The karate tournament was yesterday, and an interesting day it was. Reese woke up in a major funk, dragging himself around and doing everything halfway. Jaren seemed to be feeding off of his energy, bringing himself down to that level. We practiced downstairs and I had definitely seen both of them do better. Jaren was really starting to get all the parts of one kata in but at the expense of accuracy and grace. I figure it is no big deal because he is after all only 7. At the last minute I have each of the boys do one pinion just in case their was a tie. Jaren couldn't remember it at all and Reese and I quickly had to show him how.
When we arrive at the dojo the place was packed as expected and Reese was still in his mood. I am hoping that he will get into the grove when he watches Jaren do his events. Jaren starts off in sparring as we all did. He did a great job, and it was a close match but he lost. He did a very good job in his form but he came up with a tie and had to perform one pinion. It started off okay, but ended up doing most of it backwards. He ended up getting third place, and I was very proud of him.

We had around an hour to kill until Reese's turn. I tried to get him to warm up in the private dojo but there was a bunch of kids fooling around in there from other schools and he was still not himself. No matted what I did he wouldn't go in and was just ignoring any attempts that I made. Melissa was able to finally get him to go in and do four pinion twice which was good. I went in with him again and was able to get two more practices out of him. There was a nice brown belt kid there from Massachusetts who gave Reese a few pointers that surprisingly Reese tried to work in. The results were the exact same as Jaren. Reese sparred against a kid who was a full head taller than he was and lost first round. He did a good job in his forms and got third place.

We had around two hours until it was my turn so we went to Standish House of Pizza. Strider was so thirsty that he drank almost the entire bottle of cranberry grape juice. We were almost done and everyone was laughing at Stri because it looked like he was falling asleep. I picked him up and he threw up over my shoulder on the seat, all over his coat, my pants, Jaren and the table. So we decided to go home to quickly change before heading back to the studio.

Mel wanted to hurry because all of her friends and classmates were on before I was and I wanted to hurry just to be there and settle my mind and warm up. It was nerve racking figuring out all the people who were in my ring with me. Sizing them up and watching them practice and do their forms. It was intimidating. One lady was very tall and one was very quick. An older lady was practicing sparring with her son and looked pretty good. Collette, Christine and I did our forms a few times to "get the bad ones out of the way" then we headed to the dojo to watch our friends. I tried to get into the zone while I was there, doing my breathing and relaxing techniques. Collette kept kicking me saying "no Zen for you". It was pretty funny.

My name gets called and I have to spar against the tall lady. I won, and all I could think of was that at least I would place. Last year I lost in the first round to Julie from our school, so it was good to get a win under my belt. The next person I went up against was the quick girl who beat Collette. At one point I was down 2-3 but came back to win 5-3. In the final round I fought Christine and won 4-1. I couldn't believe I got first place, even though there were only women and me in the ring, you can't underestimate them. I was feeling good going into my form. It seemed to go as well as I could do. Then I get called up again at the end to do a tie-breaker with one pinion. I didn't practice it in the morning but I seemed to do good in that as well. Sitting on the floor as they start calling off the names of people last to first, so you do not want to hear your name. When they called the name of the person I had tied with for third place I knew I had second and I congratulated Laura (the quick girl) next to me because I knew she had first. I was glad it was over but love the build up to it, it is such a rush to hear your name get called to go up there even if it is for only twenty or thirty people to watch you perform.