Montreal Abu Dhabi Pro Trials Feb 9th and 10th 2013

So, this past weekend we made the treacherous trip out to Montreal for the cursed Pro Trials.   I say cursed because this is the second year in a row that Ontario/Quebec was hit by a massive snowstorm when 90% of the competitors were on their way to the event.

We had originally planned to leave around 5am on Friday morning, but as the forecast for the storm got worse and worse, we opted to leave on Thursday evening instead.   We did all our running around, collected all the passengers and were on the road from Burlington around 9:45PM.   Ideally we could be in Montreal by 3:30am.

Let's just say the situation turned out pretty much as far from ideally as it possibly could.  Matt, Daniel, and Ken made it to Montreal for about 4:30am.  This is pretty good time, considering the snow, and blowing snow that we had to drive through.  Toronto was pretty messy, which was weird because it wasn't even really snowing at the time we went through. But the roads had not been plowed and cars were driving like maniacs.  We had a car spin out, cross all the lanes back and forth and end up facing us, stopped.  It was about 2 feet from our front bumper.  Thankfully I managed to stop in time, and get my 4-ways on to avoid being rear ended. 

We had a lot of car trouble, which I am not going to get into at this point. I am waiting to see how Hyundai Canada / Hyundai's Road side assistance / Mountain Hyundai handle the situation. If they take care of things, I will be nice about it. If they don't, well, I'll get into every detail about how things went down.   To keep things simple, for now,  We didn't get to our hotel until 5:30PM on Friday night,  in a rental car.  For the ride home,  Riccardo went with Matt, and Josh caught a ride home with Dainis.  Thanks again to Dainis for helping us out!  Josh had to get to work for Monday morning and it would have been really really cozy to put 5 people in Matt's car.   Alasdair stayed to keep me company, for which I am incredibly grateful.  It would have been lonely, boring, stressful and depressing to be stuck in Montreal by myself.

We stayed at the Auberge Universal, which is pretty much across the road from the tournament venue.   We opted for the convenience of walking to the venue for 2 days over being where the weigh-ins took place.    It's a decent hotel, with a pretty good restaurant and friendly staff.   We ate quite a few meals at the restaurant because we were lazy and tired and didn't want to go out in the snow any more then we had to.    Our room was clean and spacious enough.  Two things that were less then ideal though. Absolutely zero sound proofing for the bathroom, which was kind of funny, but a little weird and awkward to.   Also, the TV in our room was pretty crappy. It was a fine size, but it was old, and the picture was pretty warped.  Not a lot of channels either.  But, we weren't there to watch TV, we were there to do watch jiu jitsu!

Weigh ins were Friday night,  we had planned on getting to Montreal a few hours before they started so Ken and Josh could cut the last couple pounds and then be ready for the 2pm start to weigh ins.  Of course we ended up leaving way earlier, so Ken was able to weigh in early enough. I have no idea what they did while we were still on the road, but they got weighed in, and ate dinner at the restaurant at the Holiday Inn.   We got to weigh-ins a bit later, because Josh had to sit in the sauna for a bit.   It was pretty rough cutting weight after our ridiculously long and exhausting trip to Montreal but he made it a-ok.

We had dinner at the Holiday Inn Restaurant, and it was pretty good.  It's reliable and tasty there, not to expensive, and it was convenient.  Josh and I both got a piece of the brownie cheesecake and it was sooooo good.    This was the start of my complete abandonment of eating paleo.   It escalated quickly and I ended up eating Pizza Hut, cake, pancakes, hot chocolate, creamy girly drinks, and everything else under the sun that isn't paleo.  I felt like crap, but whatever.  I was stressed out, and options were limited and I like tasty food sometimes.  I'm back on track now.

Saturday morning we were disappointed to find out that the hotel restaurant didn't have a buffet for breakfast anymore.   We were really looking forward to it.  They had a decent breakfast though, and no one left hungry.   They have caramel spread in those little jam packets. So tasty.   They also have this nasty looking stuff called cretons.  It's pork and cream and looked pretty gross. No one ate it but apparently it's petty normal in Quebec.

So, onto the tournament.   Here are a few observations I made about it:
A couple things I noticed while watching the events.

1. They were being very strict on what was allowed under peoples gis.  I saw more then one fight stopped mid match, and the fighter had to take of the tights they had under their pants.  I really don't see how tights would affect a match, but they were very strict on that.

2.  They were being very strict on belts being tied.  A few times fights were stopped in the middle just to tie belts back on.  Nothing like killing the momentum. I saw a few fights that the re-starts from this went badly and guards were past or people were swept that I am certain wouldn't have happened without the restart.

3.  They were NOT being picky about gi sleeve length.  It looked like a few people were wearing 3/4 length sleeves, or short sleeves.  It's weird to be so picky about things that don't matter, and then allow some of those gis to be worn.

4.  The quality of refereeing was all over the place.  I know refereeing is a hard job, I've experienced it.  I try not to give other referees a hard time, but man,  some of the calls that were made really made me scratch my head.  There were several decisions that I was wondering if i was watching the same fight!  That being said, there were also some very good decisions made and a lot of very tricky fights to referee. 

5.  There was an unusual amount of gi rippage happening.  I saw at least 5 pairs of pants ripped in one day.  Those are seriously weird odds.  Normally you hear about 1 or 2 pairs in a long day tournament.  This weekend was not long days.  Not even 300 competitors over 2 days.   I'm curious what the underlying cause is for this.  People wearing their favourite gi?  People being extra intense with their grips?  Who knows.

6.  Overall the tournament was very well run.  It ran on schedule,was smooth sailing as far as I could see and generally 10000X better then then New York Trials.


As far as our team was concerned:

Alasdair won his first match by submission with only a bit of time left.  He had the guy in a triangle for a while, but he got out.  In the end he took the back and got a RNC.  It was a great match to start the day.   He drew his good friend Dan Davis for the second round and a very close first few minutes of the match ended with Dan taking home the win.   I imagine it was pretty weird fighting someone your as close a friend as those to are.  I mean, I'm friends with a lot of my competition, but I never train with them or anything.

Josh had a really good, low scoring fight with Nihad from Gringos,  who ended up wining the division, and taking 2nd in the light weight absolute.  I think Josh has made it his new life mission to beat Nihad while they are both still blue belts.

Matt  went 1-1 in his weight class, placing 3rd and 1-1 in the absolute, which put him in 5th I believe.  He won his first fight quite handily and in his second fight he was ahead, but it was clear the cold/flu had sapped his energy.   In the absolute Matt won his first fight in a dominate fashion and then faced a very tough Nathan Dos Santos from Toronto BJJ.  These guys have fought a couple times and it was a great match.  Matt's gi ripped 1/2 way through the fight and in the end Nathan came out with the win.  He went on to place 2nd in the Blue belt heavy absolute.

Daniel fought in the middle weight division, which isn't his usual division.  He didn't realize that it was no-gi weigh-ins the day before.  He was significantly smaller then his competition, but still managed to put on a great fight.    He won his first fight quite handily.   In the second fight, his gi ripped, and he ended up losing a tough battle.

Ken won his first fight as well, with a score of 17-0.  Then he came up against Brody from BTT (Alpha MMA).  They had a very eventful match and Brody came up ahead on points.   I would love to see these two fight again sometime.   Brody ended up winning the division, and winning the white belt absolute!   In the Absolute Ken faced a kid we all call Bocek because he looks a bit like Mark Bocek.

Overall, a pretty solid day for the team. Not amazing results, but certainly not bad.  Everyone fought their hardest and represented well. 

Overall, the level of Jiu Jitsu at the tournament was outstanding.  I think the purple belt divisions were especially stacked.  There was no easy way to the finals, and every fight on Sunday was a close match.

 I would have liked to have seen some more girls out.  It seemed like there were less then last year.  There was 0 white belts, which is almost understandable, considering they are lumped together with all the blues, in a single absolute. But It's not unheard of for an experienced white to beat blues,  2 years ago a while belt won the whole thing!  I can totally understand why there are so few trips for the ladies, when they just don't show up.    I really liked that they had more weight classes, I thought this would draw more women out, but I guess the fact that you still had to win a single absolute kept a lot of the white/blue away.

Here are the pictures I took.  If you know any of the people in them that aren't tag, please suggest the tags for me! 

I'm looking forward to next year's trials. I'm not going to have a concussion, and I'm going to be in good shape for it.  Hopefully I'll be able to cut for the -132 division and It'll be fun.

This weekend is the Toronto Grappling Tournament.  We've got 10 people competing, so that should be a good time.  I will be refereeing again, so I won't be able to watch my team mates :(   That is the downside to contributing to the sport I suppose. 

Stuff and Things

So I normally blog about a tournament as soon as I get home, but I have nothing good to say about last weekend, so I don't really want to talk about it. I lost because of poor reffing in the very first round of my division. So I was the ONLY person in my division who didn't get into the absolute by default. So I went all the way to New York, for five minutes of jiu jitsu. It wasn't even a standard length match, they only do five minutes. I don't want to sound even more like a big whining baby so I'm not going to get into it.

I will NOT be returning to the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials in New York, and I will be strongly cautioning against it to anyone I talk to about it. I'll stick with the Montreal Trials from now on, which are run very well, have qualified referees and have added a bunch of weight classes for the women this year.

Check out the facebook event for the Montreal Pro Trials here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/427250647334271/   I will be competing in the Purple and up division, maybe -61kg but likely -68kg. 61kg will be quite a challenge for me to make, but it puts me at the top of the absolute, instead of the bottom. The weigh-ins are the day before, so in theory, I can dehydrate a bit of it, and still perform well.   When my mom reads this I'm going to get a lecture, but I deserve it. 134 lbs is really really light for someone who is 5'10. 

Yesterday, I agreed to replace an injured fighter on a super fight card in Montreal. I will be facing my friendly nemesis Alison Trembley in a purple belt super fight, assuming I pass my grading on November 10th. If I don't, well, I guess it will be a mixed belt super fight, which is fine, because a lot of tournaments are blue and up anyway so it's all good.

Alison and I have some serious history, we have competed against each other six times in the past, four of which took place at the Ontario Open last year. I have lost every encounter with her, but I feel like in the gi matches last year I wasn't being outclassed or anything, she was better than me, no doubt, but it wasn't like I didn't belong in the match. I did score some points on her, which is more than the people she fought in her division at worlds last year can say! I'm really looking forward to fighting her again because she is one very tough cookie, and it will be a good measure of how my jiu jitsu has come along in the six months or so since the Ontario Open. 

Here is a link to the Facebook event for the super fights: https://www.facebook.com/events/267227370058467/ All of the proceeds from the event are going to an autism charity. None of the fighters are being paid, we are all donating our time and efforts to support the cause. The event has some great sponsors on board, and is taking place at the Holiday Inn Midtown Montreal, which seems to be a very supportive hotel to the Jiu Jitsu scene in general. It is often the official tournament hotel for events in Montreal. VIP Tickets are $50 and regular tickets are $30, hit up the Facebook event to order them.

Also coming up is the OJA Provincials. Myself and 4 team mates(Alasdair, Matt, Jon and Heather) have all earned free entry into the provincials by earning points throughout the year at other OJA events.  Alasdair was 2nd in male adult Blue, Matt was top 10 in white belt no gi, Jon was top 10 in white belt gi, and Heather was top 5 in female white belt gi. Congrats to all of my teammates and also to all the other athletes who earned their way to Provincials. It should be a great event, even though they aren't giving away any trips.

Last but certainly not least is the Grappler's Quest North American Championships coming up Dec 1st in London. They are giving way $500 to a bunch of the absolute winners, so that should bring out some top level guys and girls. This will be the last event of the year for me, and will be competition number 18 for the year, or 19 if you count the super fight.  

I'm really looking forward to the break between Grapplers Quest and Ascension in January. I am going to spend some time developing some new techniques and having fun with jiu jitsu instead of always being super focused on the next competition and the testing and everything else. 2013 will be quite different than 2012.  As a purple belt, I will have a lot less opportunities to compete locally. I will limit myself to tournaments that have significant prizes for the advanced divisions (because that will bring people out to play) and to the few tournaments that Pura will be attending officially as a full team. I plan on going to Worlds and hopefully Pans in California, as well as the Chicago, New York City, and possibly Boston IBJJF Open tournaments.  These tournaments have all had some purple belt ladies in my division in the last year, so in theory, I will have people to compete with there.

That's all for now!  See you on the mats!

Scheduling Crisis!

This is the first blog post that isn't a report on a tournament! How strange.  I'll be competing this weekend at the IBJJF Montreal Open, So expect a report on that when I get home.  anyway....


As you may or may not know, my 2nd job is working for the Ontario athletic commission as an official at mma events.  This is a great job, I love it.  It doesn't give me that many opportunities to work which is a mixed blessing.   Last weekend at the Score fighting Series  they announced their next ontario event.   Oct 19th.   The weekend of the OJA  Ottawa Open!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

I've been planning on attending that tournament since It was announced.  They are giving away a bunch of trips and I've heard good reports about the event last year.  Not to mention, it's a tournament, and I am addicted to tournaments.  I know I would have some good competition at this event to, because it's in Ottawa, and there is a lot of super tough girls in the area(Alpha MMA,  BTT, other girls from Montreal and Quebec). 

This wouldn't be so bad if the event was somewhere not ridiculous,  but it's in Sarnia,  about as far away as you can get from ottawa without being in northern ontario!  There really isn't a realistic way for me to do both things and I am super bummed about it.  This will be the first OJA event in 2012 that I will be missing, or I have to miss an opportunity work work for the commission, which isn't a great option because there have only been a few events this year. 

Next scheduling drama.   The NYC Abu Dhabi Pro Trials announced there event date.  Oct 27th.  Last year it was 2 weeks after the Montreal trials which was perfect and my whole life plan/ schedule revolved around that being the same.    Now what do I do?   Make the plans to go to NYC in October and spend a freaking fortune in that expensive city?  or skip it, counting on winning in Montreal in the winter?  If that doesn't work out, there isn't really any trials after it that I could get to.     The other thing they've changed is instead of it being on a Sunday, it's on a Saturday.  Which means I'll have to take Friday off work,  again.   I only have so many vacation days, and they are running out pretty quickly!

I have a couple team mates who want to go to new york too.  We could all share a room, but it's still expensive to get there,  either gas, or bus tickets, or plane tickets. Then there is subway, taxi, food.   It'll probably add up to like $500 / person + tournaments fees and food.    Anyone out there looking to sponsor some BJJ athletes?  Seriously?   We need cold hard cash.  or just the plane tix.  either way.  I'll put your brand all over my blog, I'll share it on facebook and twitter.  I'll mention you and put your logo in the highlight video I'm working on.   I'll be eternally grateful.

  

I really wanted to win a trip to Abu Dhabi

After the Ascension tournament, I had my confidence back.  I felt like I had gotten most of the rust off from my long time off and I was back into the swing of things.  So I registered for the Montreal Abu Dhabi Pro Trials.  

We had a pretty decent size team head out to Montreal for the event, which was pretty cool.   Weigh Ins were the day before, which was great, for those on the team who weren't in an open weight class.  Unfortunately, for the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials,  there is only 2 weight classes for women.  and I'd likely have to cut off a leg to make the lower one.   The weigh ins all went fine,  hopefully next year they bring in some more staff, or find a way to stream line the process because it wasn't to quick, and the line up filled up the entire hotel lobby for much of the afternoon/evening.

The venue for this tournament is the BEST venue in Canada for grappling competitions.  The

Centre Pierre-Charbonneau is a great venue,  It has seating all around the "arena"  and the arena is sunk in, it's almost pretty square, so there isn't really a bad angle from anywhere.  I've got some good memories at this place from judo tournaments back in the day and that familiarity helped me be focused and get into the zone so to speak.  

So my fight was the only (or maybe 1 of 2)  fights in the first round.  which means, unlike 90% of my division, I didn't automatically qualify for the absolute, which was the division that the winner gets the trip for.  I'm sure by the tone of this post already  you can guess how my match went.   I lost.  It wasn't a terrible match,  It was very close on points, but then i got frustrated, and left my arm out,  and tapped.  The worst part is, my arm wasn't in trouble,  before I had even tapped the first tap it was free.   I think in my head, I had given up because I was down on points and there was very little time left.   I quit fighting, and that's the worst thing in the world.  

After the match, I managed to mostly hold myself together until I got away from people, but I was so mad at myself, and disappointed with myself that I couldn't hold back the tears.  Once I got myself back together (mostly)  I headed back up to my team to cheer them on and whatnot.  As long as I didn't think or talk about my match I was fine.   It's funny, even now, like 6 months later, if i think about it I get angry at myself and If I dwell on it to long I'll get on the verge of tears.  I hate being a girl sometimes!! 

Sadly, none of the team was able to win the finals of the absolutes to win a trip.  At least we got to go some early sunday instead of having to wait around for someone to fight in the final.  There's always a silver lining, or something like that!

On the way home, my team mate Alasdair (who also really wanted to win a trip)  asked me if I wanted to go to NYC in two weeks to try to win the trip there.   I don't think he was serious at first,  but the more we thought about it, the more it seemed like a great idea.    So we registered, booked a hotel, and bought some overnight bus tickets.    Sadly, Alasdair ended up separating his shoulder in a super fight at sub x. and we scrambled to replace him, so Kyle came along instead, which was fine by me!  I just didn't want to be in NYC by myself!

We got to the bus station in Buffalo early,  so ended up on an earlier, express bus, which put us in New York at 3 or 4 am.    We found a cab and got to our hotel.  (which has a checkin time of 4pm.)   Thankfully, No one was in our room that night/morning so they allowed us to checkin!   I'm so glad they did, we were exhausted and I have no idea what we would have done otherwise.  

On Saturday we wandered to time square and did a bit of shopping and site seeing.  Then weighed in.  Nothing to exciting or unusual.   We got some food after,  and I spent the evening relaxing in the hotel and Kyle wandered NYC.    We had a great breakfast at the breakfast diner across the road from the hotel, checked out, and took a cab to the venue.

I think by the end of the weekend we ended up spending at least 100 bucks on cab fairs!   But it was convenient and got us where we needed to be.   We had some adventures trying to get a hotel back to NYC proper after the event, but it all worked out in the end.

On to the event!    I got a better draw this time around, sort of,  At least if I lost the first round, I could still get into the absolute!  Good thing to, because I lost on points, to the eventual division winner Nicole Whissel.   It was a close match but her wrestling and tight guard prevailed.   I won't get into details, but the timing for this tournament was bad, and I was probably at about 50% strength, which, when dealing with wrestlers, isn't so good, but even at 100% I think I would/will have trouble against Nichole. She's one tough chick!     I had some trouble convincing the tournament people that I still qualified,  They thought it was only semi finalists, not quarter finalists. But once they saw their own tournament flyer It was all sorted out.

In the absolute, they had some pretty crazy draws.  The first place people from the two divisions ended up facing each other in the first round!  and losers like me had byes!   I wasn't going to complain, I needed all the help I could get.    There was a lot of draws that day that had much bigger problems.  (like people having 2 or 3 rounds of byes straight into the semi finals, in a division of 16 ish).   Anyway....   In the Quarter finals,  I faced Rita Floyd in a good match. I ended up winning by arm bar!  

Then in the Semi's I fought Hana Fisher.   We had some good stand up back and forth ness, and then I pulled guard, I should have trusted in my Judo more, but I didn't see any good openings, and didn't want to waste to much energy and time on it.    She ended up passing my terrible guard and we had some scrambles and back and forths  and I ended up in  kimura somewhere in there.    Now, I have a bit of a past with kimura's I've been in a few to many and my shoulders really don't like them.  So i tapped fast and that was the end up my day.    Hana ended up winning the trip, so I at least lost to the champ.   She medaled in Abu Dhabi and also placed 2nd at worlds.  So I don't feel terrible losing to her at all.  Hana and Nichole had a crazy crazy crazy close match for the final. I felt sad for Nichole because she, like me, had competed in Montreal with less then the desired results! 

I think the level of competition in NYC was actually higher then Montreal. Hana came all the way from Texas, and there were girls from all over.    In the end I was bummed about not winning the trip (again), but Not nearly as devastated as I was in Montreal.   I don't really know why.   What I do know is that next year,  I am going to win a trip.   I have been training and competing like a crazy person and no one is going to stop me from getting to Abu Dhabi.