An action packed weekend in some bits, and a little bit of downtime inbetween.
The club had a trials competition to determine the selection for the team members for the upcoming Founders Cup weekend. Although I was fairly certain that I wouldn't be selected, I still put my name down because it was some experience in Shiai, and so I could still get to play some Kendo since during the holiday period, trainings have been fewer thanks to school holidays and also exam period. The draws were done by our instructor, and was slightly different to normal. In a normal competition, the first round is a round robin setup with three players in each pool, and the winner by matches, then points, goes onto the next round. Typically due to the size of the competitions, the second round is a direct elimination, either a 1/32 or 1/16, then the typical 1/8, 1/4, semi, and final. In this case, we did a 1/12 elimination, to end up with two halves of three players, and the second round was two round robins where the winners by match, not points, went into the final. It still worked, but was just different.
In my match, my opponent is a naturally aggressive player of sorts. I wouldn't say he's predictable, but his patterns are fairly predictable in that if he goes for a ni-dan waza, he will always go for the kote-men, or a men-men. It meant that I was able for the initial part to stay off the flat end of his shinai, especially since he was trying to push me off the edge of the court. He managed to score the first point on me with a men cut, which I don't really remember how it happened, but I didn't have too much in expectations. It isn't really the right mentality to go into a matching thinking you're going to lose, but I was being realistic at least in that regard.
The second point of the match was very unexpected and quite surprising in that I scored it. It was a semi-debana kote cut, and when I made the cut, I was in full extension with my feet and I thought I wouldn't get the point because of no footwork followthrough zanshin. However, to my surprise, I heard the 'yame!' call, and looking at the head shimpan, the hands were up, "kote-ari" , saying that the kote cut I made was a point. Wooot!~ The last point went to my opponent who also did a kote cut on me, and I was just too slow to avoid it/block it.
Afterwards, we had a debrief of sorts where our instructor made a few comments in regards to how we played, why points were given, why they weren't, etiquette in entering and exiting the court etc. He said to me, infront of everyone else, that he was very surprised because I played much better than he expected me to. Harsh as it sounds, and as rude as it sounds, he means no malice by it, it is just his way of using English, but it was good to show up his expectations in that my abilities were improving somewhat. ^^
Watching the rest of the matches was fun, with some execpted upsets in the pools, but the finals were kind of expected with some good kendo in parts.
Post training, I drove a carful of people up to Lindfield for a wedding reception. Two of the club members had got themselves married on wednesday this week, and it was their 'reception' that evening. So, we had a party, with lots of food, piano music, some alcohol, talk, tv and so forth. It was a nice gathering, with quite a lot of people, all primarily from Kendo in some way or another.
When it came to speeches, there were some touching words said about their relationship together, and the relationship between them and us, their friends, which was beautiful. Both of them had no family in Australia being international students when they had first come here, and us, the kendo club members had become their surrogate families being with them throughout and helping them along. There was lots laughs when they recounted how they first met and their thoughts on marriage and having children too.
It went latish but not too late, so I ended up driving some people home through Summer Hill, Homebush and Lidcombe before getting home just after 1am.
It was a good night, but I was pretty tired by the time I got home.
The club had a trials competition to determine the selection for the team members for the upcoming Founders Cup weekend. Although I was fairly certain that I wouldn't be selected, I still put my name down because it was some experience in Shiai, and so I could still get to play some Kendo since during the holiday period, trainings have been fewer thanks to school holidays and also exam period. The draws were done by our instructor, and was slightly different to normal. In a normal competition, the first round is a round robin setup with three players in each pool, and the winner by matches, then points, goes onto the next round. Typically due to the size of the competitions, the second round is a direct elimination, either a 1/32 or 1/16, then the typical 1/8, 1/4, semi, and final. In this case, we did a 1/12 elimination, to end up with two halves of three players, and the second round was two round robins where the winners by match, not points, went into the final. It still worked, but was just different.
In my match, my opponent is a naturally aggressive player of sorts. I wouldn't say he's predictable, but his patterns are fairly predictable in that if he goes for a ni-dan waza, he will always go for the kote-men, or a men-men. It meant that I was able for the initial part to stay off the flat end of his shinai, especially since he was trying to push me off the edge of the court. He managed to score the first point on me with a men cut, which I don't really remember how it happened, but I didn't have too much in expectations. It isn't really the right mentality to go into a matching thinking you're going to lose, but I was being realistic at least in that regard.
The second point of the match was very unexpected and quite surprising in that I scored it. It was a semi-debana kote cut, and when I made the cut, I was in full extension with my feet and I thought I wouldn't get the point because of no footwork followthrough zanshin. However, to my surprise, I heard the 'yame!' call, and looking at the head shimpan, the hands were up, "kote-ari" , saying that the kote cut I made was a point. Wooot!~ The last point went to my opponent who also did a kote cut on me, and I was just too slow to avoid it/block it.
Afterwards, we had a debrief of sorts where our instructor made a few comments in regards to how we played, why points were given, why they weren't, etiquette in entering and exiting the court etc. He said to me, infront of everyone else, that he was very surprised because I played much better than he expected me to. Harsh as it sounds, and as rude as it sounds, he means no malice by it, it is just his way of using English, but it was good to show up his expectations in that my abilities were improving somewhat. ^^
Watching the rest of the matches was fun, with some execpted upsets in the pools, but the finals were kind of expected with some good kendo in parts.
Post training, I drove a carful of people up to Lindfield for a wedding reception. Two of the club members had got themselves married on wednesday this week, and it was their 'reception' that evening. So, we had a party, with lots of food, piano music, some alcohol, talk, tv and so forth. It was a nice gathering, with quite a lot of people, all primarily from Kendo in some way or another.
When it came to speeches, there were some touching words said about their relationship together, and the relationship between them and us, their friends, which was beautiful. Both of them had no family in Australia being international students when they had first come here, and us, the kendo club members had become their surrogate families being with them throughout and helping them along. There was lots laughs when they recounted how they first met and their thoughts on marriage and having children too.
It went latish but not too late, so I ended up driving some people home through Summer Hill, Homebush and Lidcombe before getting home just after 1am.
It was a good night, but I was pretty tired by the time I got home.
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