First Tournament

My first tournament was one hosted by our sister club in Dawson Creek. For competitors there were a heap of white belts, lots of Yellows, herds of Orange, me solo at Green, no Blues at all, 2 Purple Belts, and a single Brown Belt.

Being the only one my rank, I expected to be put in with the Orange Belts. Never considered they'd put me with the Brown and Purple Belts. I would be two ranks lower then the lowest of them. No way. No way at all. Surely they'd stick me with the group one rank lower....surely.

Nope. My category became Green, Blue, Purple and Brown Belts, with no Blues.

Did I mention it was my first tournament? Man up, you say? There was going to be both Kata and Fighting...I mean Free Sparring. As our club was all White, Yellow, and Orange Belts, and me a single Green, we'd never actually ever learned about Free Sparring. The other club did it all the time. Do I mean we didn't learn the finer points? Nope. I mean I'd never ever done it.

Didn't matter too much for our Whites, Yellows, or Oranges. Every competitor in those groups were from our club, so all were virgins together. I was the sole sucker in a group trained in fighting, but who had never fought.

Oh well. I was in a small group, after all.

Kata time. Kata is solo forms, not fighting. I did my very best Heian Yondan. I was the first in my group to perform, so as I bowed and backed away finished, I was momentarily in FIRST PLACE. The pride. Next up was one of the Purple Belts. Surprise, I remained in first. Next, the other Purple, and I remained in first. Lastly, the Brown Belt. He did I Kata that looked real tricky that I'd never seen before. The bastard stole my Gold Medal...but I did get Silver.  Wooo Hooo. Now time to fight.

I fought first. Typical. Went up against the Purple guy I considered the weakest of the lot. Weak, is a relative term. He held two ranks on me, plus fighting training, and was much bigger than me. The ref called begin. My opponent shuffled forward fast and scored within seconds, landing a punch to my body. Halt. Back to center. Begin. He did the exact same thing and scored again. He got a half point each time, and a full point is an instant win. Match over. Duration about 10 seconds, tops.

My next match was the Brown Belt. Lovely. At least it wasn't over in nanoseconds this time. He scored a half point on me, but was having trouble getting a second to end it early. He seemed to really want to end it, and he got fancy. He threw a spinning back kick. I was a tad unready, as I'd never seen one before. Maybe he expected me to move, or maybe his distance was off, or maybe he was mean. He hit me really, really hard.

Karate sparring is supposed to be non-contact. What is really meant by this is light contact. This means that attacks to the face can only just barely touch the face, and body shots are supposed to go whump, but not really do any damage.

He hit me really, really hard. My lungs decided air was too heavy to haul around, and so they expelled it all and refused to allow any more in for a while. The ref called us back to our start spots. Being a rough, tough Karate guy, I didn't show my distress. Not supposed to. The judges considered Brown's kick. They decided that he'd hit too hard to be allowed a point, but not hard enough lose a foul point.

Brown seemed to really like his spinning kick, as he kept throwing it. Being a gormless idiot, I never figured out how to stop him hitting me hard. He kept hitting just like he had before, meaning they never gave a point for the kick, but also never deducted a foul for excessive contact.

It hurt, and I was really frustrated, but I couldn't stop him. "OK," said my brain that couldn't leave well enough alone, "if I can't make him miss, I'll throw myself into the kick, and when he lands it on me he'll fly out of bounds, and I'll get a foul point out of him for that". Worked perfectly. Sadly, it made his kick land much harder, but I was ecstatic. Also sadly, there is rule about not losing a foul point for going out of bounds when pushed. They considered his kicking my guts as me pushing him out of bounds.

He won by decision. Big surprise. My last match was me with two loses, up against the guy with two wins. He beat me by decision.

No fighting medal for me. My victory? I did better with each match, against progressively better opposition. The cost became evident in the changeroom afterwards. My entire ribcage was a mass of bruising. I looked kinda like I'd been murdered by a motorcycle gang with chains and baseball bats. The most interesting mark was a perfect footprint shape nearly dead center.

It all healed.