Comments for blog.limedaley.com/post/karate-tournament-standish-maine

Comment #3104

2016-04-17T19:59:01Z

Well, there is a reason that God calls us to be Restrained. For our own good and those of others. It's even part of the karate school - Self-Control, Self-Discipline, and Respect.

Comment #3103

2016-04-14T11:20:02Z

Oh, yes, never underestimate the power of Heather Unrestrained. :)

It makes me think of a line from an NCIS episode, where one agent has just discovered that her husband is having an affair. "[He] is aware that you carry a gun for a living?"

Comment #3102

2016-04-14T06:58:22Z

I think for the most part, judging the sparring is really hard, since it is all no-contact, and even at the higher levels, where some contact is allowed, there still isn't any contact that would hurt someone (except by accident), so it isn't really anything like boxing or wrestling, where it seems more obvious to me how one earns points.

They have three judges, where one is the lead judge, and when the lead judge thinks he saw a point happen, he yells, and the two participants step back, and the three judges point (theoretically independently) at the side who scored the point (or cross their arms, if they didn't see a point), and as long as there are two in agreement, the point is scored.

The "independent" part came in with one of the main judges who it appeared that he liked to see fairly even points, and definitely not a shut-out -- though one happened by accident, because I think he forgot, due to some non-scored points because the other judges didn't see what he was seeing (the judges surround the two participants, so they see different things). And so there is a bit of eye communication and body language to help the scores come out more evenly.

There are also some other rules about where you can hit, which made at least some of the matches hard for me to figure out what was going on, and when I described one match to our sensei, he thought it sounded strange too, so I must not have been seeing it correctly (our sensei guessed that perhaps the kicks were too far to the other's back, which doesn't count).

The other thing that seems like it could be better is that the match stops every couple seconds to see who scored the point, and then they restart again, and so it seems to me that there is a huge advantage to long arms/legs and just a simple, quick hit, that wouldn't actually work that well in the long-term.

It did bring back memories of when I refereed a 9-10 year old girls' basketball game. It is pretty hard to do it fairly, and not stop the game constantly when the girls forget to dribble the ball, etc.

I suggested to one of the evaluators that it would be neat to see the evaluators do a demonstration sparring match, and I guess they do that some years, but they weren't planning on it this year. It sounds like they do demonstrations of forms more often, and that isn't as interesting to me.

I think the most surprising part of the whole tournament was watching my sweet, meek, quiet wife hitting another woman with her hands and feet, albeit no contact. It does make one wonder if I should stay more in line... :)

Comment #3101

2016-04-01T12:15:04Z

Thank you, Sarah. Our pictures and videos will be up sometime in the near future, I hope.

Yes, Mom, someone commented that the girls (in several categories) were like Amazons!

Comment #3100

2016-04-01T12:02:36Z

Thanks for posting that, Sarah.

I just realized the implications of this: "[Jonathan] usually does not get to spar with bigger people than him." People in his age group bigger than Jonathan? That's hard to imagine, even if girls do mature faster.

Comment #3099

2016-04-01T11:41:40Z

Did you see the pictures?

http://villarisstandish.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/2016-Maine-Event-Results.pdf

Good job everyone!

Sarah

Comment #3098

2016-04-01T02:32:15Z

Congratulations to everyone! I'm not at all surprised Faith did so well in forms. Her intensity and concentration have been obvious from the very beginning.