Battle on the Mountain Karate Tournament at Seven Springs

The tournament was good and bad.  Paul's group was very big.  He was the very first to go for his forms.  He got all confused because the judges called him all the way up to them and he did not back up before he started.  He missed part of the form.  However, he got the hard part, the knife hands correct!

Paul did awesome on his break.  He followed protocol beautifully and broke both boards on the first try.  He did hammer fist and jump front kick.

Paul had to spar this big kid.  He just ran at Paul and attacked each time.  Paul was overwhelmed.

Paul was so, so, so excited about his big first place trophy for breaking!  I love the expression on his face, like he can't believe it.  

 Shawn's form.  We all did Pyang Ahn Cho Dan.

 Knife hand

 A great smile for Shawn, and a smile for me when I saw Anthony there taking pictures.

 My front kick break.  I was quite confident that I'd have no problem breaking.  It took me multiple tries for each board.  I was very disappointed.

A great kick in Shawn's sparring.

 I sparred Marion first.  It was a good fight.  She won 5-3.  I was just thrilled I got some points.  I hated wearing my mouth guard.  I thought it was hard to breathe and it made me feel like gagging.
Then I watched the other two girls fight.  They were really tough, and the tall orange belt was fearsome.  She kicked really hard and had very long legs.  I was extremely relieved I was not going to have to fight her, she was supposed to fight Marion for first.  But, somehow they screwed up and I had to fight her.  I was terrified.  I just couldn't figure out what to even try to do to get a point.  I didn't want to get anywhere near her because I knew she was going to kick hard.  When I did get one point I was disappointed because I didn't want to prolong the fight any longer than necessary.   I kept hearing Master Ward behind me yelling to kick higher.  I didn't care, I just wanted out of there.  Marion was encouraging me which helped a bit.  When I finally sat down, I started crying and didn't really stop for the next 6 hours.  I think I'm still dehydrated from it.  Master Ward told them that Marion should have been the one fighting for first and then they told me that I had to fight the other girl, the yellow belt. Master Ward took one look at my face when they said I had to spar again and somehow made it so that I didn't have to.  I didn't want to fight for 3rd place, I just wanted to be done.  I tried and tried to stop crying, but every time someone said a kind word to me, or any word to me, I'd start again.  I was a real mess. Here was the only picture of me getting my trophy that you couldn't really tell I was crying.

I did get a third place trophy for my form, which did make me happy.

Marion and Master Ward and me.  Again, trying not to cry.

I think I'm supposed to learn something from all this.  After all, I shouldn't even have had to fight that girl, they just made a mistake.  So obviously I'm supposed to learn something.  I'm not sure what yet.