Scott Blog Tournament 2 Day 1.

Tournament 2


Day 1

Monday the 8th of August was competition number two. After the first competition on the 24th of July i was exhausted. For the last couple months i have been training non stop for completion. I would do extra training before morning classes, during afternoon breaks, and at night. When i finished the first competition i thought about taking a break. Clement and Oran took a couple days off from class but i never seemed to come around to ask a day off from Master. I leave in a few months so i want to get through as many forms as i can. Also Master made me the second leader of the class now so i didn’t want to take a break.



The second tournament is known to be harder than the first one. At the first one there were about 500 people max. This one was said to have about 1,200 people minimum and it lasted two days. Still, the week of the second tournament i took it a little easy. Also since the tournament is a week this time we are training from Monday to Saturday and then have Sunday to rest and Monday at the competition. The week before the completion, after classes i would stretch instead of doing my form. During classes would be when Clement and i would train each other for the second competition but after class we rested. My knees also been acting up a little so i didn’t want to put to much pressure on them before the tournament.

The day before the competition a few guys from the academy went to the bath house to get massages and relax. Kc and i tagged along. We got a good night sleep and woke up at 5am. Jake and i went to warm up at 5 again just like the last competition. After warm up was a shower and then breakfast. This tournament was at a new location somewhere in Yantai. Day 1 was Monday. From our school, only 7 out of 13 competitors from the first completion went. I had one form to do on Monday, my staff form, and two on Tuesday, WingChun and Baji fist forms. A couple other guys from school had to compete both on day 1 had to compete on day 2 as well. A few people from school came to watch on Monday since we had Monday off from school. Master Xiang, Qu, Rong, and Sun went to the competition with us. Only Master Rong competed on Day 1.

So many schools from all over Shandong came to this tournament. Almost all of them did Mantis. Not really surprising due to the fact Yantai is the birth place of Mantis. So many young kids where doing forms so much faster and more complicated than most of our forms. Master Guo was a judge for this tournament. Two mats, green and red, where laid out and each mat had about 8 judges. Master was judging on the green mat. Clement and i both where told by Kathy, the translator, who had the list of who is going that we were competing second but he was on red and i was on green. I was happy and a little nervous that i have Master as one of my judges. When the tournament started we all sat with the Masters and other competitors from my school on the left of the judges. The place this time was a bit older. The floors and chairs where dirty, the bathrooms where horrible, the performing floor was a lot smaller as well. Only reason i could think of why they went here instead of the first competition was it had more seats.

Remember how i said we were told there would be 1,200 people. Well that day it rained...it rained hard. We got there and there were about 800 competitors or maybe more but clearly no more than 1000. The Masters told us since its raining so hard, not a lot of people showed up. That’s fine by me, less people=less nervous for me.

So the competition started. Whie the first guy was performing, i asked Master Xiang if i should start getting ready. He said," No, you later later. In afternoon." So i went to sit down and watch the morning competition. So many great performers. We saw people performing fist forms to Weapon forms. Some weapons forms were amazing, some were a little repetitive and boring. After 3 hours of watching people perform it was lunch break. The competition took a break from 11:30- 1:30. The head master went to go get lunch for the competitors which was nice. Clement and i went down to say hi to Master Guo. He seemed bored judging but he said it was ok. We told him i will perform on the green and Clement on the red. Master laughed and said he will be a judge for me. I was not sure if that’s good for me or not. He knows my form so if i mess up like last time he will know. During the lunch break, Clement and I practiced our form a little on the mat to get a good feeling of the mat and the space. After we had lunch, we started warming up. I was not sure when i performed in the afternoon so i started warming up with everyone else. Master came to us on the mats and told me and Clement that he is going to the red mat to judge so Clement had him as a judge not me. I was a bit relieved to hear that. When it started, the masters told us our order. I was LAST! LAST is the WORST! Why? You spend the most time being nervous and you can’t sit down and relax or else you get tired and your muscles will get cold. This is probably the worst way to prepare. The week after the first completion, I slacked off on the extra training, and now I have been sitting around all day feeling nervous. Well, I will do the best I can. Maybe I should not have taken it so easy last week.




After watching others for two hours I went to Master and asked if i am up soon. He said the same thing again, "No, you last, last." I wondered if started to mean last one to perform out of everyone! I asked him how many more people in front of me. He flipped the pages full of names about 3 times. He said still about 40 people. That’s not good. I sat down with the other Masters and tried to relax. I had about another hour to two hours till I’m up. Master Sun, Xiang, and Rong sat with me. They spoke to each other in Chinese and i listened in and picked up a few words here and there. My Chinese got a lot better thanks to Big Mac. I spoke back to them a bit in Chinese. I told Master Rong his performance was great and asked if the other Masters performed today and if they were tired. They saw me a bit nervous and tense and Master Xiang laughed and said “Relax Relax” in Chinese. Then Master Sun gave me some advice on performing which was nice. When ever the masters called us for our order of tournaments they would use my Chinese name. They did that for both tournaments. When ever another master instead of Master Guo called me ‘Zi Long’ it sounded weird. But I'm glad they use my Chinese name, makes it feel more like I am in a Chinese movie.

When there were only 20 people till my turn I went to warm up. I felt bad because everyone from my school who came to watch seemed to be super bored. I did not want to keep everyone waiting just for me. What if i messed my form up and they waited for nothing? I should not have taken it so easy the last week. More ideas like this ran through my head. Made me a bit more tense. Clement came over and said he could see i was tense and watched me practice my staff form. Finally i was up. Master Guo left his judging seat and came over to watch me. I remember walking up to the mat, then I remember walking off the mat. I blanked out, but somehow i did my form. When i got off the stage i ran to Clement and asked him if i did it right because i don’t remember doing my form. He laughed and said i did it perfectly. Since the others finished their forms early they got their results. Everyone from my school got gold except for one guy but he was happy with silver. Since i was literally the last one to perform i would find out my score on Tuesday. That did not make me too happy. We all got ready for the trip back to the academy. We got back had dinner and after washing up i crashed on my bed. It was about 8pm and i was already ready for bed. I had a long day and being nervous was exhausting and i needed rest. Tomorrow i had two forms so i got a early night sleep.


-Scott