Attended the annual Best of the Best tournament, held in Half Moon Bay again as typical. There were 18 competitors including myself. Master Gemini took first again, Kaiden The Severer took second, and Daniel took third. I had made some adjustments to my armor so I had some better mobility, but I still need more work, particularly on my grill and bevor. As usual, I had some good matches, and some matches where I should have done better, but in general I felt reasonably good about the day.
Tag: botb
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I journeyed to Arata's Farm in Half Moon Bay for the annual Best of the Best tournament. At final count, there were 14 competitors this year,making for a long and somewhat gueling day (about 7 hours for the tournament, which started around noon, an hour late, and I had arrived around 8:30, an hour ahead of the requested arrival time). Head Kaiden Gad won first place with over a 90% win. My final tally is TBD. Generally, I had several very good matches, and I had some disappointing matches, but over all I felt good about the tournament and marshaling. I'd still like to see the Western Circle learn more from other martial schools regarding good martialing techniques for tournaments in particular.
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I participatedin the 2018 Best of the Best tournament today. With 14 competitors, it was the largest tournament to date. My personal performance was erratic. I found myself too often falling back on old (bad) habbits, thinking too much, not applying the strategies I have been working out over the past several weeks. Over all, I had compliments on my quality of form and technique, but I ranked only middling, with both my former students Kaiden Sal and Steven doing better than I (which is both good and bad).
I did finally have my new steel helm, though unfortunately this was its inaugural debute,and I had some issues with the chain skirt binding on my neck and/or body armor and the visor binding on the bevor. However, I barely felt the head strikes, the padding work well, as did the four point harness mostly, though I may need to adjust the webbing toward the back of the head to make certain the helmet doesn't fall forward quite so much (which was contributing to the binding on the bevor). I also want to get some help bending the chin of the visor out further as I was only able to make minor improvement, and that would help with the binding, too. Head Kaiden Gad pointed out that I still need metal elbow and knee cops, so I can make that a goal for next year.