Second Week of School
3 years ago
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Crazy Sleeper
When Emma goes to bed each night she reads for awhile. The other night I guess she decided that she wanted to read in her chair rather than in her bed. She got up and dragged her chair over next to her bed so she could continue to use her lamp. Later when we went in to check on her etc before going to bed ourselves, we found her asleep in her chair. Silly girl!
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Class A Chicagoland TKD Tournament
Yes, another taekwondo entry. Another tournament. There are tournaments held all over the country each year that are open for anyone to come and compete. If we wanted to take Emma to all these tournaments we could, no matter where in the country they were being held. The only real incentive to do that is if you are competing for state champion or something along those lines. If that's the case, you get points if you win based on the size of the tournament. The bigger the tournament, the more points. Emma is not competing for any sort of title. We just wanted to go for fun and to experience a tournament this size. We found out about it when she was asked to go by a couple of her instructors. Class A tournaments are the biggest ones. That's based on the number of people competing. Smaller tournaments would be called class B and so on. Being in the Chicago area this one can easily draw a huge turnout. We went with no expectations, just looking forward to the experience.
There were tons of people there. They had between 20 and 25 rings for the competitors to compete in. They had competitors from all ages and belt ranks, from 4 year old white belts to over 60 year old 3rd and 4th degree black belts, and perhaps even higher. The highest ranking black belt in all of American TKD was there - a 9th degree black belt. There is only one of them at a time. He's getting pretty old though. I still wouldn't want to fight him.
There were several different events each competitor could do, but being our first time at a tournament this size, we decided to only have Emma do 2 of them. She would compete in forms and sparring. Those two events were sort of a package deal anyway - you did one, you had to do the other. They were running very late on their events (I guess they misjudged how long each group would take), and Emma didn't compete until about 2:00. She was supposed to compete just after 11:00. I'm really glad I took some snacks for her, because all they had there was greasy stadium type food.
Anyway, they were dividing all the groups up by sex into fairly close belt ranks and ages. Because of how they divided them, even though she's only 8, Emma was in the 9-11 year old group consisting of brown belts and red belts. That equals 4 belt levels, because there are two levels within each belt color. There was only one other brown belt in the group. The rest were all high red belts (Emma was a low brown - she's since passed her next belt test and promoted to high brown). It was definitely going to be an uphill battle for Emma. We just wanted her to have a good time and enjoy herself. We don't mind Emma learning that you can't always win at everything. The idea of participation trophies? Yeah, I think that's a terrible idea. At least by the time you're Emma's age.
Anyway, they did their forms first. The way judging for forms works, is they have 3 people come up and each do their form, then all 3 together stand before the judges to receive their scores. After that, everyone receives their score immediately after they do their form. The idea here is to help give the judges some perspective. If the first person were to receive a fairly high mark, but then all the other competitors do better, the judges might run out of higher scores to be able to award. Make sense? In any case, the order they compete in is completely random. It's better to go later though, because the judges often tend to forget exactly how the earlier competitors did, and might award a higher score to someone who was not in fact any better. It seems a little unfair, but it's all subjective.
Of course, Emma was called to be one of the first 3 girls. Bummer. She did awesome though! But we were on pins and needles while the remaining girls went. And they just seemed to keep coming and coming! Every time I thought it was done, and that she had secured a third place win, another girl would still need to compete. It was torture! I don't know how people do this all the time! Crazy! Anyway, they finally finished, and although they didn't officially announce anything then and wouldn't be awarding trophies until after all the events were done for this group, we knew from the scores that Emma had won third place. We were thrilled. Especially since the 2 girls who took first and second were amazing. The first place girl must do nothing else besides TKD. Ever.
Emma waited until the last event, which was the sparring, before she competed again. It is again done by random who you spar against each round. Emma had the great misfortune of sparring against the girl who ultimately took first place in each of the 4 events. So Emma was eliminated in the first round. Had she sparred against someone else she might have been able to earn second or third place, but maybe not. We'll never know. In any case, it had been such a long day up until this point that I think Emma was just relieved it was over.
After the sparring was done, they called all the girls up and handed out the awards. We were so thrilled that Emma won a trophy. These trophies were huge too! She was so proud of herself too. Not too bad considering we went into this with no expectations. Emma said she would love to go to another one of these, even if she didn't win anything. She really enjoyed to experience. Awesome!
There were tons of people there. They had between 20 and 25 rings for the competitors to compete in. They had competitors from all ages and belt ranks, from 4 year old white belts to over 60 year old 3rd and 4th degree black belts, and perhaps even higher. The highest ranking black belt in all of American TKD was there - a 9th degree black belt. There is only one of them at a time. He's getting pretty old though. I still wouldn't want to fight him.
There were several different events each competitor could do, but being our first time at a tournament this size, we decided to only have Emma do 2 of them. She would compete in forms and sparring. Those two events were sort of a package deal anyway - you did one, you had to do the other. They were running very late on their events (I guess they misjudged how long each group would take), and Emma didn't compete until about 2:00. She was supposed to compete just after 11:00. I'm really glad I took some snacks for her, because all they had there was greasy stadium type food.
Anyway, they were dividing all the groups up by sex into fairly close belt ranks and ages. Because of how they divided them, even though she's only 8, Emma was in the 9-11 year old group consisting of brown belts and red belts. That equals 4 belt levels, because there are two levels within each belt color. There was only one other brown belt in the group. The rest were all high red belts (Emma was a low brown - she's since passed her next belt test and promoted to high brown). It was definitely going to be an uphill battle for Emma. We just wanted her to have a good time and enjoy herself. We don't mind Emma learning that you can't always win at everything. The idea of participation trophies? Yeah, I think that's a terrible idea. At least by the time you're Emma's age.
Anyway, they did their forms first. The way judging for forms works, is they have 3 people come up and each do their form, then all 3 together stand before the judges to receive their scores. After that, everyone receives their score immediately after they do their form. The idea here is to help give the judges some perspective. If the first person were to receive a fairly high mark, but then all the other competitors do better, the judges might run out of higher scores to be able to award. Make sense? In any case, the order they compete in is completely random. It's better to go later though, because the judges often tend to forget exactly how the earlier competitors did, and might award a higher score to someone who was not in fact any better. It seems a little unfair, but it's all subjective.
Of course, Emma was called to be one of the first 3 girls. Bummer. She did awesome though! But we were on pins and needles while the remaining girls went. And they just seemed to keep coming and coming! Every time I thought it was done, and that she had secured a third place win, another girl would still need to compete. It was torture! I don't know how people do this all the time! Crazy! Anyway, they finally finished, and although they didn't officially announce anything then and wouldn't be awarding trophies until after all the events were done for this group, we knew from the scores that Emma had won third place. We were thrilled. Especially since the 2 girls who took first and second were amazing. The first place girl must do nothing else besides TKD. Ever.
Emma waited until the last event, which was the sparring, before she competed again. It is again done by random who you spar against each round. Emma had the great misfortune of sparring against the girl who ultimately took first place in each of the 4 events. So Emma was eliminated in the first round. Had she sparred against someone else she might have been able to earn second or third place, but maybe not. We'll never know. In any case, it had been such a long day up until this point that I think Emma was just relieved it was over.
After the sparring was done, they called all the girls up and handed out the awards. We were so thrilled that Emma won a trophy. These trophies were huge too! She was so proud of herself too. Not too bad considering we went into this with no expectations. Emma said she would love to go to another one of these, even if she didn't win anything. She really enjoyed to experience. Awesome!
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| Emma shaking the judges hands when they were giving out the awards. |
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| Emma with a couple of her instructors, including the owner of the school, who came down to support the competitors. |
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