Hello there, how are you? I am walking on air.

Yesterday was Octoberfist. It was a hoot. Friday we met Jay (a brown belt friend of ours from Mr. Bolen's dojo) in Owasso and drove to Lawton. Anna, Ethan, Joshua and I went. There was also a 13 year old orange belt from Mr. Bolen's named David. He was cool. The drive into Lawton was about 3 hours and we arrived at about 9:20. Jay's dad lives in Lawton and we stayed the night at his place. He has a dark black poodle with toenails painted red. On his wall are several funny sayings. My fav. was "I love you more today than yesterday. Yesterday you really got on my nerves!" And "If you are seen smoking in this house we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate measures."

Saturday we got up, ate breakfest, packed up and left. We got to the tournament at about 10 (it started at 11). Josiah (a purple belt from our school who goes to most of the ABKA tournaments) was already there, as was Mr. Murry and his son Jason. We were supprised to see Mr. Murry: I had thought he wasn't going to be there. At about 11 they held the black belt meeting and then started with black belt kata. Then came under belt weapons (Josiah got 4th for his bo kata and got a compliment from Mr. H!) Then they sat all the under belts down, went over the sparring rules and assigned rings. Because they only had 5 rings everyone over 18 was told to simply hang until a ring was done. I told Jay that it was the sad truth that we were simply too old to be cute and not good enough to be impressive! :) But the good part of it was that I got to watch most of what Anna, Ethan and Joshua did! Ethan's kata was very good: however, he started a little too close to the judges, so his backfist with kia ended up a little close to hitting them. Not good. Josiah was in the same division as Ethan and did a really good kata as well, but he messed up a little bit and paused (which is not a good thing!). But he got first and Ethan was second, by only half a point! I was pretty happy with that. For one thing Josiah is a belt higher, and for another he goes to four classes a week (or sometimes three) and he's a very experianced tournament competator. Plus it was cool that BattleCreek took first and second in that division! Then Ethan did really well in fighting, once again winning second, once again beaten by Josiah. After two minutes they were tied, so they did "sudden death" for first place: the first clean point won. Josiah got it.

Joshua rocked. He took first in kata. Lots of kids in that age backet can do kata with power and intensity but almost none of have good stances. Joshua has power, intensity AND stances. Which is why he's won first in kata in both tournaments he's been in. I didn't get to see him fight, but he took first in fighting as well! Yea! I've been having him fight a lot of fighters who are bigger and older than him and it paid off.

Poor Anna did not place in kata. And there were only four people in her division. Mr. Murry was one of her judges though and he told her that her kata was in fact the better one. And her score was only one point below the winners score. So she was happy. She lost both of her fights. Mr. Murry says we need to have her fighting more tall guys.

And finally, at last, a ring opened up and I got to compete. Now, let me explain a little background. I have been working this kata for a year now. I have been seriously praparing it for about nine months (with a few months off in the summer). Most of that preparation has been done with Jason Murry, who is a kata freak. Jason always gives the lowest score when judging. I have also spent some time working on the kata with Mr. Murry. Mr. Murry has some of the best kata in ABKA and he holds his students to a much higher standard than most instructors do. So guess who are the judges for my ring? Mr. Murry, Jason Murry and another black belt. I about died. Having Mr. Murry wasn't nearly as bad as having Jason: I knew he was going to be EXTREMELY hard on me. I was the second last to perform. The whole time everybody else was going my heart was pounding wildly. Finally my turn came. And after all those words I just wrote leading up to the event, I don't have that much to write about the event. I performed the kata (it's amazing how short it seems after all those months of working on it!) and was scored. Mr. Murry gave me an 8, Jason a 7.5 and the other dude an 8. I won by half a point. Interestingly enough, the girl who won second also performed Wansai Sho.

So. I had won kata, which was the real reason I had gone to the tournament. I could have walked away after that and been happy, but we still had to fight. I didn't really expect to do well, but was hoping to. There were only three guys in my division and both were a good deal bigger than me (at least 220 pounds...I'm only 150). Since there were only three they had two guys fight. Then the winner would fight the other guy for first place. The loser from that fight would fight the loser from the first fight for second place. I ended up being the odd one out on the first fight. The cool thing was that I was able to watch how both men fought and figure out which way would be best to win. The guy who won was the guy I was hoping I didn't have to fight, because Jay had told me he didn't have any control. And when he's that much bigger than you, you want him to have control! But Anna and I both agreed that his ribs were weak and a quick reverse punch would win the fight. It was a hard fight. He didn't have control, but it wasn't very bad (he just knocked me to the floor a few times). The reverse punch worked very well. I scored 5 points on him: 4 with a reverse punch and one with a side kick. He made 4 points. So I won first in kata and first in fighting! Is that cool or what?