Well, I don't really need to say too much but it was a long long day. I was there at the start for registration and shinai weigh-in. Kata competition went quickly, and so did Womens competition too, which left us at "lunch" very early. They extended lunch quite considerably, and we got a lunchbox of takeaway portion food. I got a rice with chicken curry while others got some other kind of thing. They also had kimchi but I declined.
Then we had a mega mega mega long AGM. Oh my goodness was there a lot of crap talked about there.... I think 90% of the people who attended really didn't care for much of it at all. However, there were some important things though, like how we need to consider that our membership have to be affiliated with NSWKA as well as paying SUSF membership due to insurance issues... which really sucks since it would blow out membership fees by an additional $70/person.
Anyway, then the afternoon session started with the Kyu teams. For us, we played ANU first up. My match was against someone called Semmler, I think Semmler Sensei's son. I didn't go very hard, but I think I overwhelmed him somewhat with something, he wasn't super aggressive, but it was over fairly quickly. We won the round 5-0. The second round we were up against Shinbukan, and my match was against this girl. She seemed to be a bit beginnerish however it ended up being a draw because every time I moved in, she went into all-out defence. It wasn't very difficult to avoid her attacks, but I am not very good at the debana waza and thus could not really take advantage of that. I was however disappointed a little with myself because in theory, I should have won it. I was told afterwards that I landed cuts, but I didn't have enough zanshin, and my playing seemed "loose", which I'm still not very sure what that means.
In the finals match, we played one of the Korean clubs, but I'm not sure which one LOL... in any case, the one I played against I think was a Kim by the character on his zekkan. He was very aggresive. Someone said to me afterwards, it was like he was doing kakarigeiko. By this point, I was actually pretty tired, doing shiai really pushes your physical condition much more than regular training, and having spent all morning sitting around wasn't really that good, nor not having a decent warmup either. No excuses however. I beat around with him for a while, nothing happening either, and then I made a men cut, and I saw his shinai moving as if for a kote cut and the flags went up. For him.
I was very surprised, I didn't hear or feel a cut land, but, thats the way it goes. Cuts are easily obstructed, especially if the shimpan on the wrong side think it landed. ~Shrug~ thats Kendo. Afterwards, our coach told me that the judging was dodgey because he thought I should have also scored a men ippon and the kote cut was no good. My opponent didn't get a second point of me though, I didn't let any openings really happen, but I couldn't pin any on him either. But, at the end of the match, the score was tied on win/draw/losses but because I had managed to lose 1-0 instead of 2-0, we came out with a +1 in points and therefore won the match, giving us first place. ~phew~
Post Kyu was the Dan event where our club made it through the first round, but got knocked out in the next round by SKC who as usual are very strong. Some excellent playing from our team though with a rapid two point win with kote cuts, along with a beautiful tsuki from one of our kyu players who was in the Dan team (since we don't have enough Dan players) against a Nitto Ryu player, and also a very valient effort from our home-grown 2nd Dan against a 6th Dan Sensei.
Presentations and packing up followed, before people bailed the venue to go home or for dinner.
Long day, not to shabby. Tomorrow is grading, so we'll see how that goes. I'm uploading photographs from the event onto my Flickr as I write this and will include a link once they are done.
EDIT: Link to photos is up
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dchiou/sets
Then we had a mega mega mega long AGM. Oh my goodness was there a lot of crap talked about there.... I think 90% of the people who attended really didn't care for much of it at all. However, there were some important things though, like how we need to consider that our membership have to be affiliated with NSWKA as well as paying SUSF membership due to insurance issues... which really sucks since it would blow out membership fees by an additional $70/person.
Anyway, then the afternoon session started with the Kyu teams. For us, we played ANU first up. My match was against someone called Semmler, I think Semmler Sensei's son. I didn't go very hard, but I think I overwhelmed him somewhat with something, he wasn't super aggressive, but it was over fairly quickly. We won the round 5-0. The second round we were up against Shinbukan, and my match was against this girl. She seemed to be a bit beginnerish however it ended up being a draw because every time I moved in, she went into all-out defence. It wasn't very difficult to avoid her attacks, but I am not very good at the debana waza and thus could not really take advantage of that. I was however disappointed a little with myself because in theory, I should have won it. I was told afterwards that I landed cuts, but I didn't have enough zanshin, and my playing seemed "loose", which I'm still not very sure what that means.
In the finals match, we played one of the Korean clubs, but I'm not sure which one LOL... in any case, the one I played against I think was a Kim by the character on his zekkan. He was very aggresive. Someone said to me afterwards, it was like he was doing kakarigeiko. By this point, I was actually pretty tired, doing shiai really pushes your physical condition much more than regular training, and having spent all morning sitting around wasn't really that good, nor not having a decent warmup either. No excuses however. I beat around with him for a while, nothing happening either, and then I made a men cut, and I saw his shinai moving as if for a kote cut and the flags went up. For him.
I was very surprised, I didn't hear or feel a cut land, but, thats the way it goes. Cuts are easily obstructed, especially if the shimpan on the wrong side think it landed. ~Shrug~ thats Kendo. Afterwards, our coach told me that the judging was dodgey because he thought I should have also scored a men ippon and the kote cut was no good. My opponent didn't get a second point of me though, I didn't let any openings really happen, but I couldn't pin any on him either. But, at the end of the match, the score was tied on win/draw/losses but because I had managed to lose 1-0 instead of 2-0, we came out with a +1 in points and therefore won the match, giving us first place. ~phew~
Post Kyu was the Dan event where our club made it through the first round, but got knocked out in the next round by SKC who as usual are very strong. Some excellent playing from our team though with a rapid two point win with kote cuts, along with a beautiful tsuki from one of our kyu players who was in the Dan team (since we don't have enough Dan players) against a Nitto Ryu player, and also a very valient effort from our home-grown 2nd Dan against a 6th Dan Sensei.
Presentations and packing up followed, before people bailed the venue to go home or for dinner.
Long day, not to shabby. Tomorrow is grading, so we'll see how that goes. I'm uploading photographs from the event onto my Flickr as I write this and will include a link once they are done.
EDIT: Link to photos is up
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