Lazy night, but sweet success!

It was generally a lazy class tonight. I was the only color belt, albeit it's leadership class, but usually at least Alex V. or someone else might be in there, and tonight, I was the only one. Oh well. Mr. A was told to just run class pretty much like usual, which generally he did. We did some drills on the kickpads to review certain sections of our forms, depending on what our forms were. Then we worked on them. There were more 1st and 2nd degrees there, so I didn't get that much attention to what I was working on, but I did get help on what I've learned so far, and got a sneak peak at the next section. Mr. A knows that I'm trying to cram this whole form in quickly so that I can use it for the tournament in a few weeks. I just have to practice. While the black belts worked on weapons, I continued to work on my form instead. I've got my weapons form down pretty much, so my regular form needs more work. Then, it happened. :-) I was told that since it's a review week, and now that I'm a purple belt, I will need to break a board using a hand strike in order to graduate to a blue belt. Great. So my choices are, knifehand strike, palm heel strike, or an elbow strike. I don't know how to do a knifehand, I'm not so great at the palm heel quite yet, so I opted to work on the elbow, since I haven't done it in a while. So I did a few warmups on the side, then a few with the board, and then.....it happened...... Mr. A and Mrs. Dr. Phillips held the board, and WHACK! My elbow went straight through on the first try. OH you can't imagine the joy I had! Now, I'm not sure if my plastic board is starting to go too, but heck, I don't care! I did it! On the first try! I worked SO hard for months to get this strike down, starting with pads on my forearm, getting major bruises on my elbow and everything. Not this time. WOO HOO! In Blue Belt, it's a foot strike, so that will be easier, as I'm much stronger with my foot breaks. We had sparring, but it was one round, and I still have to watch it with the "windshield wiper" blocking. I am really determined to do better in sparring for the tournament. I might not rank in sparring for the state, but I want to be able to hold my own better, that's for sure, and when mentioning that to Miss Chunko, she agreed that mentality was the better way to go. Nina asked me if I was going to the Tournament in September-- I had heard there was one and thought it was local (meaning in NJ) and said yes. I found out tonight it's in Newark, DE. Heh, I'll still go. It's about an hour, hour and a half away, so that's still relatively local, and it'll give me the opportunity to rack up some more points if I can.

I am determined to do better this year than last year. OK, so I just joined the "circuit" back in April and caught the tail end of it, but I still ended up 3rd in the state in weapons. Who's to say with an earlier start and more practice, I couldn't at least be #2 on all fronts? It's worth a shot.

I also got a little bit of news from the World Championships. I talked with Emily, who only competed as a Top Ten finisher. She got #1 in forms and #3 in sparring. Not too shabby. That's in the WORLD for special abilities women, all ages. She also told me, which I didn't know, that she is on the World Demo team, so I DID see her during that internet broadcast of the opening ceremonies. Sweet. I also heard through the grapevine that Ma'am got 4th in sparring (she is also a top ten finisher for her rank and age group in the world) and missed being 3rd by one point for the year. I also heard that in some session, she was judged by two masters and a 3rd degree. The Masters gave her higher points than the 3rd degree, and that might have cost her that placing. But to know that Ma'am in ranked 4th in the WORLD for 4th and 5th degree women-- I'm still proud to be her student, and that's considering I know her shoulder has been really a big problem for her. It'll be interesting to hear the results of other stuff regarding our group coming back.