Karate Tournament

I started learning Tae Kwon Do in 1992, and continued through college, except for several months after a knee surgery.  In that time, I competed at two tournaments - Both the Bluegrass Nationals in Louisville in 1994 and 1995.

I started learning Karate this January.  Michael has been taking it for a year, and I decided to start as a way to get a good regimented workout.  It's harder to skip when there's a scheduled time and class.

Karate consists of several sub-disciplines.  Basics, Kata, Weapons, and Sparring.  My favorite has always been sparring.  So, when I heard that others from our school were going to a tournament, I decided to give it a try - even though I've only sparred 5-6 times this year in class. I'm out of practice, but I've managed to stay pretty limber so I can kick high, which surprises a lot of opponents.

We arrived at the tournament, which was held in a high school gym around 9:30 am.  We watched lots of katas (basically a choreographed set of moves judged on precision and good form) and we waited.  We expected to be done by 2pm, but by 4pm, we were STILL waiting.  Some of the other students from our school (mostly kids) did katas and also did some sparring/fighting.  But it wasn't until close to 5pm that I got called.

I signed up to fight in two divisions - 18-34 yr old males "advanced rank" , and 35-39 yr old advanced.  Even though I'm 39, you are allowed to fight "up" one division if you choose.

So, to figure out who fights who first, they have you "randomly" line up. This picture shows our lineup- Although there's a guy missing 2nd from the left of the picture (not sure why):

18-34 year old advanced rank division fighters

You then fight in that order.  The first two guys on the left fought, then the next two.  Look closely... I'm 4th from the left (3rd from left in the photo), and the guy right next to me is the guy I had to fight first!  Let's just call him Shrek.  He was really nice, and he was HUGE.  He was at least 6 inches taller than me, and at least 100 pounds heavier.  At a larger tournament, he would have been in a different weight class, but not here.  He looked down at me and said "Shrek live for this. Shrek always win".  I asked him where Donkey was.  Notice that Shrek is bending over a little... I think he needed to do that to get a whiff of the denser air now and then.

Anyway, we fought.  The matches run 2 minutes, with judges pausing the fight when someone scores a point by punching or kicking the opponent in legal areas (which is pretty much everywhere except face, legs, and spine - even the groin was open).

Shrek kicks.

Shrek could literally extend his arm off the line and hit me on top of the head (which he did do a couple of times).  I couldn't kick to his head without getting run over by him, and when he kicked or punched, it was with enough power that even a good block by me would just get brushed off.  He went up 3 points quickly.  But then, he put his fist near my head and extended a finger... knocking me to the floor.... and pissing me off.

Shrek about to get hit hard.

Here's a shot of Shrek about to get hammered by my ridgehand.  And I didn't take anything off that one... contact is supposed to be light here, but after he knocked my down, I didn't really care.  I scored with that move, and then managed a couple of good kicks to Shrek's belly, which I don't think he noticed until the judges called STOP.  With about 10 seconds left, the score was 7-7.    Shrek once again extended his arm and bopped me on the head, scoring the winning point.

I didn't feel the least bit bad about losing that one.  He came over afterward and told me that he ALWAYS wins these tournaments, and didn't expect any competition from me.  He ended up taking 2nd place.  There were some great fighters in that group-  Even if I'd beaten Shrek, I'm not sure I could have beaten anyone else.  Maybe.


Then I fought in the 35-39 division, advanced rank.

My first fight was with another tall guy. But nothing like shrek.

First fight.  Another tall guy.

He scored quickly on me and went to a 2 or 3 point lead early, but I methodically worked my reverse punch into his ribs with an occasional backfist to his head until I was up by 2 points with about 10 seconds to go.  I played defense -he scored once, but I still won by 1 point.

My next fight was with an old lady.  I don't know why she was there, but she was.  I went easy on her and won 9 - 3.  Even though was wasn't a great fighter, I give her credit for being tough!

Grandma narrowly avoids my roundhouse kick

After that, I got to fight for the win!  The other guy was about my size, and had a similar style (lots of kicks).

It was a really close match.  He had a great chambered kick defense that was hard for me to kick over.  Here's a look at what he was doing a lot- holding his knee high, ready to kick at any moment.

The championship match

Here I am eating his backfist....

And here he is about to take my reverse punch to his ribs...

In the end, I won the match by one point and managed to win the "senior" division!

This was a fun experience!  I feel great about winning my division, and I definitely have some stuff to work on to get better.  Maybe I'll try another tournament in the fall.  The fighting part was great fun.

The waiting part sucked!   Joy and Michael deserve trophies for waiting around all day.  And thanks to Joy for taking lots of good pictures!