Nick’s First Tournament

We spent yesterday afternoon in Riverview, MI watching Nick compete in his first karate tournament. He had missed an earlier tournament, we wanted him to compete, but he kept saying he wasn’t interested. Then the night before the tournament he decided he wanted to do it but by then it was too late. When he saw how well his friends did, he immediately decided to he would enter this tournament.

Nick’s second of three breaks

So we took the 45 minute drive ‘downriver’ to where this tournament was being hosted. He had decided to compete in two events, forms and breaking. Forms didn’t surprise me, as his instructors wanted him to compete in forms the last tournament because he is one of those students that knows his forms so well other students tend to keep on eye on him during practice when they can’t remember what move comes next. Breaking surprised me, as I didn’t even know that he was interested in that, or that he felt comfortable enough with it to want to compete in it.

First event of the day was forms. What I think Nick is best at. You should see him practicing them at home in the front room. Usually, he finds some way to incorporate some Legend of Zelda twist into them. Takes up the whole front room. Anyway, they randomly determine the order of the competitors, and as luck would have it, Nick had to go first. Nothing like going to your first tournament and getting to your first event and having to be the very first person to compete. You should have seen Becky right before he was to begin. I can’t remember ever seeing her as nervous as she was on Saturday. She had the butterflies going and everything, especially right before Nick started his forms.

Two gold medals!

He did a great job, and got some good scores, but again, he was first, and the rest of the competitors still had to go. I tried to keep to keep track of the scores as each person performed. With the three judges, they take all of the scores from each judge and add them up to get your total score. I figured he was first or second, but wasn’t sure as the scores were too close and I hadn’t been adding each one up as they went along. It was pretty exciting though when they lined up the kids and we realized after announcing who was second that Nick had won! Sweet! Nick was excited as well when he came over to show us his medal. What a great way to start off his first tournament.

We had a break as there were two events Nick didn’t want to compete in next. Swords, which we tried to get Nick to do but he declined. His instructors wanted him to do it just for fun as it’s not really serious at the level (orange belt) Nick competes in. It’s something they have mostly for the kids to enjoy and have fun. It was pretty fun watching kids try to beat each other over the head with foam swords though (Mom, remember how we’d do this with the metal vacuum extensions). Sparring followed swords, another thing I tried to get Nick to do but he told me he felt he wasn’t as good at sparring. I had just watched him spar on Thursday night, and told him that he wasn’t aggressive enough on offense, but that he was really good defensively as he’s one of only a few students I noticed that kept his hands up all the time and moved around a lot on the mat instead of standing there waiting to get hit. He is really hard to get a point against because he moves really well. But, the pep talk didn’t work and he held out from sparring as well.

Nick & Mr. Pitti

Next up, breaking. This was a tough division, as there were a couple kids in his class that are both really good in this event and were competing in the same division as Nick. I can’t remember, but I think Nick was third to compete. And to add to Becky’s nervousness, we didn’t know we were supposed to provide our own boards. Luckily, the dad sitting next to us helped us out with that and let us know they had boards we could purchase for the competitors out front. He grabbed some for us and we passed them on to Nick. Then, to make things worse, Becky was under the impression that the boards were scored or something to make things easier. Nope, just plain old regular boards. Then we found out the wider the boards (width, not thickness) determined how hard it was to break. We looked at the ones we got for Nick, then at the ones the kids he was competing against had, and realized his were on the larger side. We thought we had got boards that were too big for Nick. After finally getting his attention, we asked him if he wanted skinnier boards. He kind of gave us that look like, “you’re crazy, I’ve got this,” and told us his boards were fine. That didn’t go very far to decrease our worries though.

For breaking, the athletes pick three separate breaks that they want to perform. Then they set up the people that are going to hold their boards from them. Then tell the judges the order they will perform the breaks. They get two attempts at each break. The first kid that went was the one I thought would win. He did really well, breaking all his boards and getting scores all in the low 7s (very good for that day). The next kid that went did some somersault where coming out of the somersault he’d break a board with his heal. He was practicing getting the distance correct Thursday night and it paid off because he got it correctly and was able to break it. Next was Nick. His first break would be a regular hammer strike, coming straight down on the board with your fist. He broke the board on his second attempt… a good start, but that was his easiest break. His second break was a side kick and this one and the third one were the ones that I wasn’t sure about. But again, he broke the board on his second attempt. Third was elbow strike, and again, he broke the board on his second attempt. We were really impressed he broke all three boards.

Now for the judges’ scores. He got 7s all in the mid to high range. His highest two scores were 7.6 and 7.7. I don’t think anyone in his division got a 7.7 in any event all day long, and there were only a couple of 7.6s. Wow, we were really surprised by his high scores! He won another gold medal. It was fun to see how excited he was when he came back over to show us his medals. I’m glad he had such a fun time competing and that he did as well as he did. We found out from his instructors as we were getting ready to leave that they felt he was ready to test for an orange stripe at the next testing right before we go out to AZ. That was exciting news as well.

Here’s more pictures we took at the tournament:
Nick’s First Karate Tournament

Also, be sure to check back in a couple days for an update. I’m working on the video we took from the tournament and will post what we recorded as soon as I finish it.

Becky also posted about his tournament on her blog, so be sure to check that out as well.

We kept telling Nick all weekend how proud we were of him and how great he did over and over again. When we asked him if he was getting sick of us praising him so much he said, “Nope, it makes me smile.” Great job Nicholas, we’re very proud of you!!!