God, I hate coming up with titles but I do what I can ... anyway, on to my talking points.
As I mentioned last time, X and I went to the U.S. Open and ISKA World Martial Arts Championships up in Orlando, FL. It was held at the Coronado Springs Resort in Walt Disney World. This was the third consecutive year that I went. Once, I would have liked to have gone as a competitor. I still can, but that desire has waned in recent times and I have been content to go as a spectator. We arrived at the resort early Friday and set ourselves up in the front rows outside the 18-29 year-old men/women's black belt ring. Or what we thought was the black belt ring. Turns out, X misread the schedule slightly and we sat ourselves at the advances under-black belt ring. We came to realize this, but before we could move to the ring we wanted a woman came up to us and asked if we were interested in volunteering. At first, we didn't really understand what she was talking about. But then she explained that she was asking if we would like to volunteer to work in the competition as a scorekeeper and timekeeper. Of course, we jumped at the chance to help out as well as get ourselves involved more with everything since neither of us were competitors. For that first day, X and I worked that ring we were sitting at for the entire day. We saw:
- 18 yrs. & Over Advanced (men & women) Creative Weapons.
- 18-29 yrs. Advanced Men Traditional Weapons.
- 18-29 yrs. Advanced Women Traditional Weapons
- 18 yrs. & Over Advanced (men & women) Musical Forms.
- 18-29 yrs. Advanced Men (under 165 lbs.) Continuous Fighting.
- 18-29 yrs. Advanced Men (over 165 lbs.) Continuous Fighting.
On the second and final day of competition, we worked a different ring and saw:
- 10 year Advanced (boys & girls) Traditional Forms.
- 11 year Advanced (boys & girls) Traditional Forms.
- 10 year Advanced (boys & girls) Creative Forms.
- 11 year Advanced (boys & girls) Creative Forms.
- 10-11 yrs. Advanced Small Boys Point Fighting.
- 10-11 yrs. Advanced Tall Boys Point Fighting.
On the first day, the competitions try to start at 15:00 and go until all the groups have had their turn at their ring. On the second day, the competitions try to start at 08:30 and everything is supposed to wrap up at 16:00. I am using a lot of conditional statements here because this rarely if ever actually happens. The first day, we started about an hour late because they were running Team Demonstrations on the main stage and a lot of the individual competitors were also competing in various team competitions. So we had to wait until those were done before we could start. The second day, we arrived early and got everything ready to go but the organizers could not find judges for our ring for two hours so we couldn't start until 10:00. That particularly annoyed me, and for anyone who knows me I think you'll understand what an annoyed Dracos means. For those who don't, just know I was letting loose many curses (hopefully) under my breath while we were waiting. I'm sure the f-bomb was dropped many times as well. But once we got our judges everything ran smoothly. Everyone we worked with complemented us on how we ran things. We kept the competitors in line, had the competitions running like a machine, had all the scores tallied and winners chosen promptly, and traded stories with the judges during breaks. If I had any complaints about anything, it would be my introduction to the soccer moms/dads. We didn't see them the first day, since all our competitors were older but on Saturday they were out in force. I could say a lot of things about this, but I am censoring myself right now and that's all I'll say. We finished our work at about 15:00 on Saturday, so we had a chance to go over to another ballroom where they were holding the ISKA/USBA Breaking Competition. The previous World Champion in Breaking, Chip Townsend, was not competing this year but we still saw some pretty impressive displays. Once everything was done, we had a few hours to kill until Saturday evening when they held the Night of Champions. The Night of Champions is just like it sounds, it's mainly where they determine the last group of champions in some of the more popular competitions. I was able to get some decent pictures there, which is my only proof that I was even at the competition (can't really take pictures and keep score).
That's probably my best picture from Saturday night.
This post is getting a little longer than I intended. I have a few other things to discuss, but I'll continue with those next time.
