Tournament Winners

The day after the black belt test was the International Tournament that Parks hosts every year, this was the 27th year. It was fun seeing old friends and those we only get to see once a year. We had people from Montana, Wyoming, North & South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Texas. Our small school had a fantastic tournament. The school was entered in 15 events, came home with 15 medals-5 golds, 4 silvers and 6 bronzes. We usually have every student at least medal once, but it has been a long time when everyone medaled in all their events.

Jennifer wanted to compete this year, especially since she tested and she talked me into competing. It has been over a year since I competed in a tournament. We both medaled in our events and we are very happy about that since we didn't work too hard on tournament stuff, spent our time with the test.

Jennifer competed in forms and weapons and she placed 3rd in both her events. She is that 18-34 year age group and it's huge. She competed with her bo staff. She now wants to learn the next form for it. She also helped judge and run rings. Her job for us was to make sure that our little ones got where they needed to go. We have one student who is autistic and his Dad needed help. This particular family has 5 children and the Mom was going to be out of town that weekend, which meant Dad had them all. Jennifer would make sure the boy got where he needed to be. Turned out that Mom didn't have to leave until Sunday, so Dad came with only 2 of his 5 kids. This particular kid is autistic but he is verbal, his attention span is very minute and we have to be very patient with him.

I also competed in forms and weapons. I placed 3rd in forms and 1st in weapons. I performed with the sword. For once I was able to compete in my own age group. For weapons there was only 3 of us oldies anyway, so that wasn't too bad. In forms there were 5 of us oldies and I was the only woman. I told Gary the good news was that I was finally in my own age group, the bad news was it was all men. It is so hard to compete against men, but I placed 3rd so I'm happy, shocked was what I was. At staging I was given the choice of competing with the younger women, but that meant I would be competing against Jennifer. We already did that at one tournament last year and it wasn't fun. I wanted to stay with my own age group.

Jennifer and I are going to work on breaking boards for the next tournament in October.

We got done with the tournament at 7:00 pm, which compared to past years is quite early. The black belt adults are always last at the end of the day, but not very many stay to help judge. At least I should say not the ones who live in Billings stay. We helped clean up afterwards and then we went with the group to eat. We always eat at the Golden Corral Buffet. Not my favorite place but can't quibble when the meal is free.

I didn't get many photos of our students competing. One Dad did video me and Jennifer with our weapons. When the sparring competition started a friend of one of our students offered to take photos of the kids. She did ok and got some good shots. In class the other day we got the group photo for the paper. I just have to write up the article for it.