Just because we don’t spend enough time running all over the place, yesterday Robby and I decided to take a drive to Bowling Green, KY to check out the “Tournament of Champions,” organized by World Champion Karate Academy.  We had attended a familiar tournament in Benton, KY a few weeks ago and heard about this one so we went strictly as observers.

It was worth it.

The tournament started late, but was otherwise very organized. The judges were given scoring instructions. Everyone under black belt was required to have face protection when sparring. The emcee was very knowledgeable and he and the other officials were moving things through quickly. All judges were assigned at the beginning of the tournament, so there were no constant cries of  “we need three black belt judges to ring three.”

The judging seemed very fair and consistent, and there were at least 10 schools present, which made it even less likely to allow bias in scoring. You could potentially be judging a ring in which you never saw any of your own students.

I don’t know exactly how many participants there were, but there were far more weapons katas at this competition than I’ve ever seen. I’ve only seen sword kata performed at competition by my own Sensei, Hanchi Bass. Here there were several different weapons including Kung Fu straight sword and eku bo.

I’m going to contact the organizers to ask a few questions about the event, but I’m definitely going to recommend it to the dojo family. A few MINOR criticisms:

• nice venue, but hard to view all the action, because you were in chairs, not bleachers. Of course, that’s also far more comfortable.
• church gym had a balcony, which would allow great views, but it was closed (to prevent dropped kamas?)
• if you were judging, you wouldn’t be able to participate in any events, or watch any of your students other than those you judge.
• many rings made the floor seem cramped, and I wouldn’t have wanted to have to run the eku bo (a long boat oar) kata, but I’m not a weapons guy, so it may have been plenty of room. I didn’t see any judges with stitches, so it must have worked out ok.

I have to say, one of the other things I enjoyed about the tournament was Bowling Green itself. We had sushi and vegetable tempura for lunch and then headed over to the National Corvette Museum instead of catching the end of the tournament, and still made it home by 7 p.m. It was a long day, but it was enjoyable. I’ll be back next year.