This was supposed to be the 2nd sub only event of the year for us, but The OJA one in Kitchener got shut down by the snowmagendonpocalyse that was a minor snow storm. It was pretty disapointing for everyone involved, but there was nothing the OJA could do, the venue shut them down. But, this post isn't about that It's about last weekends road trip to Montreal.
It started out like a typical drive to Montreal, so that means horrible traffic from Mississagua to Whitby. We headed out around 3pm, and got to our hotel at around 10:00pm. Which isn't actually that bad, we made great time past whitby, and only took 1 gas/food/pee stop.
We stayed at the Novotel near the Mirabel airport. It was only $100+tax per night, and had free parking and wifi. The parking and wifi are two of the biggest factors when I pick a hotel. It's great that a hotel is like 75 or 80 per night, but if parking is 15 bucks (or 20 or 25, or even 35) and there is a fee for the wifi, suddenly $100 looks a lot better. The room was quite nice, the headboards had cool lights built into them, that we didn't discover until we were heading out in the morning. We couldn't hear people in the hall, the beds were comfy, the room was big enough, and the bathroom was quite nice. The pillows were kind of flat, and there was only 2 on each bed, so that kind of sucked, but if that is the worst thing about a hotel, I'll stay again. The bathroom doors were weird, and there wa s a gap in them, which meant zero sound proofing. I swear, this is the one thing hotels can't get right. We DON'T want to hear everything that is going on in the bathroom!
Anyway... We did our ussual morning routine for these events, go weigh in for the very start of weighins, then head to Cora's for breakfast and back to the venue intime to digest, relax, and get ready to fight. Cora's is a bit pricey, but it's realiable, never very busy, and pretty close to the venue.
The event started with a 20 minute sub only super fight between Gabe Sagman and Steve Shipinkas. It was a pretty entertaining match and ended in a draw. Steve did get a penalty, which the reff used to award Gabe the win, but that was changed right away, since it was only 1 penalty, and it was sub-only, ect. Neither guy dominated enough to be declared the winner so a draw was a fair outcome.
Next up after the super fight was the GI Super Absolute. This was IBJJF ruleset, open belt, open weight, open gender and it was an extra $10 to enter. I admit, some of the match ups that happened were pretty interesting, but I am not a huge fan of the concept, especially the guys vs girls thing. I'll be the first to say that women should be allowed to compete in men's divisions if there is no one in theirs, but to hae the potential for a 120lbs white belt women to fight a 250lbs purple belt guy, It's just asking for injuries. There were quite a few girls in the nogi version, and none of them made it out of the first round (that I saw). I admire them for giving it a go, but It's not something I will ever do. Toronto's Sub only coming up in March has the trips as prizes for the super absolutes and I am pretty disapointed about it.
Anyway... The format for the tournament was round robin, where you get 4 (ish) fights, and then there may or may not be tie breakers. A win by sub got you 3 points, decision got you 2 points, and a tie got you 1. This worked pretty well, but got a bit tricky when you ran into people who didn't show, and people who dropped out to injury. These were treated as decision wins, and got the "winner" 2 points. I think, down the road, they would be better of re-doing the draws after weighins closed so that no-shows were eliminated and everyone got a fair shot at getting the full 12 points for 4 sub wins. After the round robin, if there was a tie, we did tie breaker matches. If, after the first 5 minutes, there was no clear winner, they fought another 5 minutes, and another 5 after that if there was still no clear winner. I only had a few of these come up, and almost all of them had subs in the second 5 minutes, or were clear cut after that 5 minutes. I don't think anyone ended up in the 2nd overtime.
I reffed for the first 1/2 of the morning, while switching off and watching a couple of new(er) referees. The I competed in my division (blue+ open weight) and went straight back to refereeing till the end of the day. My second fight was a real eye opener for me. I fought Ashten, and she is really tough! It made me see that I really need to tighten up my game and never give an inch. it was a really good match, and I look forward to competing with her again down the road.
As you probably know, grappling industries uses really small mat areas. It's something I've complained about as a competitor and a referee on many occasions. I know mats are expensive, and they have limited venue space, blah blah blah blah, but it is DANGEROUS to have such small areas, with such limited safety areas between them. Especially with inexperienced referees who cannot control the fighters they are refereeing. On Saturday, I saw fighters repeatedly ending up on the mat beside them, and even once, on the mat beside that. This is ridiculous. The referees need to be more assertive, and have better positioning, the fighters need to have better awareness of where they are, and the tournament needs to have bigger areas and/or bigger saftely areas between them.
This issue was highlighted by a situation that happened to me, while refereeing min-afternoon. I was standing at the edge of my mat area, keeping myself between the fighters I was refereeing, and the mat behind me, focused on those fighters, when, out of the blue I got full on taken out from behind. Thankfully, my fighters were still standing, were paying attention, and stopped and waited, while the fighters from the mat behind me climbed off me me (while i was pretty much face planted) and I dragged myself up. I rolled my ankle and got some pretty awesome bruises from the whole ordeal, which isn't to bad, all things considered, but it could have been MUCH worse and should NOT have happened.
On to happier things. Pura had a pretty great day, we had 4 people competing: Steve, Jon, Andrew and myself, and took home 6 medals. Steve won gold in gi and nogi, Andrew won gold in gi and bronze in nogi, Jon won Bronze in gi (did not compete in nogi) and I won gold in gi (did not compete in nogi). Steve was on fire, subbing all his opponents handily. Jon had a bit of a rough day, he'd been sick for over a week and was still quite under the weather, but he still managed to put a guy to sleep. Andrew dominated his gi division and looked good in his nogi division as well. His gi final was a tie breaker that he won after overtime by decision.
I'm not entirely sure what happened, but the gi absolutes for the guys just didn't happen. My division was already combined, so I didn't have one. Since there were supposed to be "Season Passes" for the winners of the absolutes, Andrew and Steve were suposed to compete for them. They both ended up getting a seasons pass, I guess because they were the only ones that followed up about it, or they gave all the winners one, I don't know. I also earned a seasons pass by winning my division (which was, in reality, an absolute). Having the season pass will be a nice cost saver for us, since we attend so many competitions and they add up quick.
As the day was winding down, some mats finished way before others, the mat I ended up refereeing at for most of the afternoon somehow had way way way more matches then the others, so I pawned a few off on 2 other mats. Then I ended up being done before one of those mats (the other still finished ahead), so I got some of them back. The guys were giving me "can we go yet" faces for about an hour and a half, so I found one of the other referees who had not started till later in the day, and got him to take over for me. Thank You for that! It made me get home at 2am instead of 3 or 4 am!
Yea, 2 am. We left the venue around 5pm, and it was snowing. Surprise, a snow storm, when we are on a road trip to Montreal. If we are going to Montreal, between Oct and May, there WILL be a snow storm. It's a fact, it's science, and it cannot be disputed. The 401 was snow covered and kind of drifty from Montreal to Kingston, where there was a bit of a break, then again from just past Kingston to about Ajax and sporatically on the outskirts of Toronto. Once we hit Toronto proper it was just went so we could make decent time. In the snow covered bits, we varied between about 60-80km/h. We saw a bunch of cars in the ditches, and a plow that looked ot be stuck as well, which is kind of hilarious. I was having flashbacks to last february's nightmare trip TO Montreal, but the good news is, my car handled the snow fine. It stayed out of my air filter, so I am confident we are going to get to the trials without any car trouble this year.
The event Photographer did a really great job taking pictures. He got a good mix of the mat areas, and got some great shots. You can see the album here on facebook. As ussual, there are plenty of pictures of me looking stupid while refereeing. I swear, not a single picture exists of my refereeing where I don't have a stupid look on my face, or am in an awkward position, or am just generally looking stupid or fat or something. I might have to open up a bounty for event photographers: First one to get a good, flattering, not ugly picture of me refereeing will get a prize.
That's about all I have to say, overall it was a pretty good event. It ran surprising quickly considering the format, but I would like to see longer matches, I think it would end up with less draws, but, then we need more mats, more refs, more staff, more space, or we would be there all night. I'm looking forward to their Toronto Event on March 29th.
Coming up next for me is the Abu Dhabi Pro Trials in Montreal on Feb 22nd. I'm attempting to cut to the -145lbs weight class, and let me tell you, my body is not a fan. It's not a fan of middle weight, let alone 145 with a gi on, but I think I will make it. I SHOULD be able to given what my scale says my body fat is, but who knows, time will tell. We have a pretty good size crew from Pura heading out for that Trip, so it will be a fun weekend!
Also coming up, just confirmed, announced, registration opened. Is Ascension on March 1st. This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year. Omar puts on a great event. I think I wil just be refereeing though, since Pans is only 2 weeks later, and last time (Ontario Open last year) I competed that close to a major event, it didn't quite work out my way, and thousands of dollars were wasted. Wasted might be a bit harsh, but I ended up on the sideline for months, wasn't able to compete at worlds, and wasted over a week of vacation time on the trip.
See you on the Mats!
Showing posts with label BJJ competition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BJJ competition. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 February 2014
Tuesday, 22 October 2013
Zombie House Oct 20th 2013 Recap!
This past Saturday we took a short drive down the 403/401/402 combination West to London. It was pretty weird going west instead of east, sure was nice not having to drive straight into the sun to get there.
This edition of the zombie house was a fundraiser for a little girl who just turned 4 years old and is fighting cancer. She is the daughter of one of the members of London BJJ, so they held the competition, and a seminar on Saturday to raise some funds for Gabby and her family. Man, cancer sucks, especially for kids. I can't even imagine how hard that is for her parents. Showing up to the event and helping out while the rest of the team competed is the least that we could do to help them out.
In case you aren't familiar with the zombie house concept... It's a sub only competition that you collect submissions and don't stop. The matches are 5 minutes, and it doesn't matter if you get subbed, you just start again. At the end of the matches, subs are counted up ad tracked. Then whoever wins each weight class (the most subs) moves on to the golden sub single elimination bracket. In golden sub, it's first sub wins, and the first rounds are 10 minutes maximum, and the final is 20. If you don't get a sub, you are both out.
The weight classes are 10ish pounds and in London it was all belts combined (there was only a couple purple belts). At bigger events white and blue are together and purple and up are together. They used to use a system where there were handicaps based on belt, but white the belts separated it wasn't necessary anymore.
We had a great time at the event, Dashti ended up being put up with the 180 guys because there was no 170's and the 160 guys were all full. He did a great job with the bigger guys and managed to get 2nd in his division with a purple belt wining the division. Josh and Joel were in the same division, with some pretty excellent competitors, including Milkias from B04 who won the division very impressively despite being the smallest guy in it. Joel hit a baseball choke which would have made Jon proud and Josh demonstrated great passing and control (and a few great subs from that control). Greg was in a division with a lot of much younger, active competitors and showed a lot of good submission defensive and heart.
I really like the zombie house format. It's friendly, it's casual, and it's 25 minutes of working your ass off. There is no tapping and getting out of the fight. The people that show up to these events aren't looking for medals or bragging rights or trips or anything like there. You are there to test out your submission game and not worry about points and staying on top or any of that nonsense that sport jiu jitsu has evolved into. Don't get me wrong, I love regular competitions as well, but it's nice and refreshing to see people just going for stuff and not worrying about position and points so much.
Interestingly, the only techniques that were not allowed were heal hooks and neck cranks, and the only injury that happened was Dan's knee, but it wasn't during a sub or scramble or anything, I didn't even see how it happened really and I was watching the match. People were going after kneebahs, toe holds, slicers and people were tapping (or not) and NOT getting hurt. It was great to see that these techniques are really as dangerous as people seem to think, it's the environment that controls the level of danger.
I was "life guarding" for the event, which is like refereeing, but since there is no scores, and it's self regulated, and friendly, I really didn't have to do much. There were a few cases where I "tapped" for the competitors when they were being a little to stubburn for their own good but generally everyone was great about admitting when they were caught and also not cranking on subs. Sometimes I had to stop them from getting to close to other matches but even that rarely happened.
I would recommend checking one of these events out to anyone looking for something a little different to try out there jiu jitsu. No meatheads allowed and no ego. I think the next one will likely be back in Toronto, but they are hoping to move them around the province.
You can check out this facebook group for more information, stats, pictures and whatnot about the zombie house events.
I almost forgot to mention who won the whole thing! Iron Mike Aviado, the rooster weight! He took out his teammate in the first round of the golden sub with a leg lock (I can't remember if it was a toe hold or straight ankle lock), then won the semifinal in decisive fashion with his signature flying armbar.
In the final, he fought Josh (who won the first round against Sen, then got a bye for the second round because Milkias and Seth was a draw). Josh and Mikes match went about 7 or 8 minutes with Mike constantly threatening subs and Josh doing a great job defending, until Mike snuck in a crazy armbar and got the tap.
I've also got to give a special mention to Becca and Mandie, two ladies who joined in on the zombie house. They are both white belts and quite small and competed with the guys. Mandie ended up placing second in their division next to Sen who won it.
SO, that's that, it looks like the next one will be a NOGI event, likely in Toronto, sometime next month! Keep your eyes open for details on Facebook!
There are a few other tournaments coming up, Grappling Industries this weekend where 5 trips to Pans will be awarded! The women's divisions are looking pretty good so ladies, you should get on that asap.
IBJJF Montreal is Nov 16th. Should be good the competitor list is pretty sparse still, but that is not surprising.
OJA Provincials is Nov 30th. I am HOPING that this will mark my return to competition! My shoulder is starting to feel pretty good so now I just need to get back into shape and get rid of the rust that 5/6 months on the sidelines creates. We shall see how my body holds up to the hard training it's going to take to get back into shape for then.
Grappling Industries last event of the year will be Dec 7th in Montreal. Should be a great event to. They will be awarding a whack of "season passes" to the various absolute winners. This equals free entry to all their tournaments for 2014. I think it's a cool concept. That's all for now! See you all Saturday at Grappling Industries, I'll be refereeing, then jetting early to head to the Provincial Fighting Championships in London that evening.
This edition of the zombie house was a fundraiser for a little girl who just turned 4 years old and is fighting cancer. She is the daughter of one of the members of London BJJ, so they held the competition, and a seminar on Saturday to raise some funds for Gabby and her family. Man, cancer sucks, especially for kids. I can't even imagine how hard that is for her parents. Showing up to the event and helping out while the rest of the team competed is the least that we could do to help them out.
In case you aren't familiar with the zombie house concept... It's a sub only competition that you collect submissions and don't stop. The matches are 5 minutes, and it doesn't matter if you get subbed, you just start again. At the end of the matches, subs are counted up ad tracked. Then whoever wins each weight class (the most subs) moves on to the golden sub single elimination bracket. In golden sub, it's first sub wins, and the first rounds are 10 minutes maximum, and the final is 20. If you don't get a sub, you are both out.
The weight classes are 10ish pounds and in London it was all belts combined (there was only a couple purple belts). At bigger events white and blue are together and purple and up are together. They used to use a system where there were handicaps based on belt, but white the belts separated it wasn't necessary anymore.
We had a great time at the event, Dashti ended up being put up with the 180 guys because there was no 170's and the 160 guys were all full. He did a great job with the bigger guys and managed to get 2nd in his division with a purple belt wining the division. Josh and Joel were in the same division, with some pretty excellent competitors, including Milkias from B04 who won the division very impressively despite being the smallest guy in it. Joel hit a baseball choke which would have made Jon proud and Josh demonstrated great passing and control (and a few great subs from that control). Greg was in a division with a lot of much younger, active competitors and showed a lot of good submission defensive and heart.
I really like the zombie house format. It's friendly, it's casual, and it's 25 minutes of working your ass off. There is no tapping and getting out of the fight. The people that show up to these events aren't looking for medals or bragging rights or trips or anything like there. You are there to test out your submission game and not worry about points and staying on top or any of that nonsense that sport jiu jitsu has evolved into. Don't get me wrong, I love regular competitions as well, but it's nice and refreshing to see people just going for stuff and not worrying about position and points so much.
Interestingly, the only techniques that were not allowed were heal hooks and neck cranks, and the only injury that happened was Dan's knee, but it wasn't during a sub or scramble or anything, I didn't even see how it happened really and I was watching the match. People were going after kneebahs, toe holds, slicers and people were tapping (or not) and NOT getting hurt. It was great to see that these techniques are really as dangerous as people seem to think, it's the environment that controls the level of danger.
I was "life guarding" for the event, which is like refereeing, but since there is no scores, and it's self regulated, and friendly, I really didn't have to do much. There were a few cases where I "tapped" for the competitors when they were being a little to stubburn for their own good but generally everyone was great about admitting when they were caught and also not cranking on subs. Sometimes I had to stop them from getting to close to other matches but even that rarely happened.
I would recommend checking one of these events out to anyone looking for something a little different to try out there jiu jitsu. No meatheads allowed and no ego. I think the next one will likely be back in Toronto, but they are hoping to move them around the province.
You can check out this facebook group for more information, stats, pictures and whatnot about the zombie house events.
I almost forgot to mention who won the whole thing! Iron Mike Aviado, the rooster weight! He took out his teammate in the first round of the golden sub with a leg lock (I can't remember if it was a toe hold or straight ankle lock), then won the semifinal in decisive fashion with his signature flying armbar.
In the final, he fought Josh (who won the first round against Sen, then got a bye for the second round because Milkias and Seth was a draw). Josh and Mikes match went about 7 or 8 minutes with Mike constantly threatening subs and Josh doing a great job defending, until Mike snuck in a crazy armbar and got the tap.
I've also got to give a special mention to Becca and Mandie, two ladies who joined in on the zombie house. They are both white belts and quite small and competed with the guys. Mandie ended up placing second in their division next to Sen who won it.
SO, that's that, it looks like the next one will be a NOGI event, likely in Toronto, sometime next month! Keep your eyes open for details on Facebook!
There are a few other tournaments coming up, Grappling Industries this weekend where 5 trips to Pans will be awarded! The women's divisions are looking pretty good so ladies, you should get on that asap.
IBJJF Montreal is Nov 16th. Should be good the competitor list is pretty sparse still, but that is not surprising.
OJA Provincials is Nov 30th. I am HOPING that this will mark my return to competition! My shoulder is starting to feel pretty good so now I just need to get back into shape and get rid of the rust that 5/6 months on the sidelines creates. We shall see how my body holds up to the hard training it's going to take to get back into shape for then.
Grappling Industries last event of the year will be Dec 7th in Montreal. Should be a great event to. They will be awarding a whack of "season passes" to the various absolute winners. This equals free entry to all their tournaments for 2014. I think it's a cool concept. That's all for now! See you all Saturday at Grappling Industries, I'll be refereeing, then jetting early to head to the Provincial Fighting Championships in London that evening.
Thursday, 26 September 2013
GTA Classic Sept 21st 2013 Recap
Last Saturday was the Annual GTA Classic. This is one of my favourite tournaments of the year. They have been hosting it in mid September or years and it's one I know a lot of people look forward to to kick of the back to school season. It's an OJA tournament, which meas it's consistent with a lot of the other tournaments in Ontario as far as weight classes, age divisions, and allowed submissions.
It also means they use the Mata Leao software to do the draws which is pretty sweet software. On two of the mats they had the new scoreboards running which use giant tv's and a laptop instead of the normal electronic scoreboards. It also recorded all the matches automatically. The one downside to this system was that is really slowed down the progress of the matches. It seemed like the table workers had to enter the names and division into the computer from the paper draw for every match which doesn't sound like it would take a long time, but it certainly delayed things since it had to be done in between each match.
The Acai Cafe was in attendance again. This was their second event and they have stepped up their game! They brought in a small size, which was great for kids, or weirdos who don't like a lot of acai and they brought in hemp seeds, cacao nibs, and shredded coconut. These added toppings were amazing and make the cafe even more amazing. They had to set up outside of the gym, which made them less visible, so I hope they still made lots of sales. You can check them out on facebook and suggest they add peanut butter for their next event :)
The tournament was scheduled to start at 9:30 and started around 9:50, not bad at all, considering they re-work all the kids brackets that morning because parents don't know how much their kids weigh and they never dq a kid for being over weight. I think that this is a great policy and I can totally forgive them for not starting on time because of this.
The kids turnout for this competition was great! I think, other then the ontario open, it was probably one of the biggest turnout for kids I have seen all year. The GTA classic does round robin for the kids, so they tend to get 3 or 4 fights. They also don't allow any subs for the younger ones, and progressively add subs as the kids get older and higher ranked. It's a bit complicated as a referee or coach, or even athlete to keep it all straight on what's allowed for which kid, but it generally keeps the kids safe while allowing them to do jiu jitsu. It ran a bit behind, but it was running solid throughout the day. There wasn't many times, that I saw, where nothing was going on on the mats.
There was a break around 1:00pm for a special presentation. Professor Scott Shilling was presented with his third degree by Mestre Sylvio da Matta Behring which was pretty cool to see. Scott has been a very active member of the community and has produced some top notch competitors as well. You can watch the video of the presentation on youtube.
I was refereeing at this event, and was pretty focused on that for the entire time I was there. I reffed a pretty wide variety of matches from 7 year old white belts to coloured belt kids, to masters white and blue belts. It was kind of nice to have such a variety. I stopped a few kids fights for armbars before they tapped on Saturday. Every single one was pretty upset about it, "I didn't tap", but the look on pretty much every single coaches face was that of understanding and appreciation for me keeping their students arms safe. I had one kid in a triangle/armbar and It very much looked like they tapped, but when I stopped it, they said that they did not tap. Everyone else seemed to think there was a tap as well, so I stood by that decision to stop the fight.
I got to work with the usual skilled crew of Ontario referees, including Ontario's newest black belt Jason Chin-Leung who is a really great referee. New to the team was Matthew Isaacs who is quite young but has been around jiu jitsu for a few years now. I didn't get to watch him to closely, but when ever I had a minute and looked over, he seemed to be handling himself very well. I'm looking forward to watching him develop as a referee.
While I was refereeing, one of the other res came around to give me a break so I could get some snacks, but he told me it was all cookies and sweats, so I passed. I really appreciate a tournament that provides snacks and water and drinks throughout the day. It helps us out a lot, it just happens to be that I follow a very low carb "diet" right now and can't eat any of that. Then, the most amazing thing happened around lunch time. Tony came to my mat with a giant caesar salad with chicken! He remembered from past events that I try not to eat pizza and crap when I am not being a fat /depressed/glutton and made sure I got one of the salads!! Man, nothing makes you feel more appreciated then that! It's seemingly small gestures like that that make all the nonsense that we as referees have to put up with a lot more tolerable.
The GTA classic had pretty nice event t-shirts, which they gave to the first 50 people registered, I think they even extended that to everyone registered before a certain date. They also had sweet prizes for the absolute winners: Samurai swords, and tournament hoodies. They were really nice hoodies to, well built and great looking style wise. I wish I could have competed and won them! That sounds like I think I would have won them if I competed, which is not what I mean. There were some very tough looking purple belts that I watched for a bit between reffing and I think I would have had some very excellent matches if I had been up to competing.
On a semi related note... A whole bunch of new purple belts have just been promoted! I hope they all come out to compete soon! You know who you are ladies!! We need to work together and compete together to help grow the scene. The purple belt ladies divisions in Ontario could be realy interesting very soon! There are some matchups I really want to see like Caitlin vs Tiffany and Tushara vs Kaitlyn. Someone make this happen!
I had to leave at 3:00 to go work at the UFC event at the ACC. I didn't need to be there till 5:00, but with the Gardiner being closed, I wanted to give myself some extra time. It's a good thing to, what google mats said should take 50 minutes, took just over 2 hours, before I gave up and parked and walked the last 2.5KM. My plan was to take the 401 to the DVP and take that down to whatever road that was before it hits the gardiner, but when it was stop and go at Eglington I abandon ship and took the streets all the way down. I was on queen st for over an hour!
The UFC was a pretty great experience, as working MMA events usually is. I did not get an opportunity to judge, but since reading all the shit people have been saying online about my colleagues, I am actually happy that I did not. It's so infuriating to see people who have NO IDEA what the are talking about saying people were robbed and going on about controversy or blind judges.
Here is what I say to all of you. You sit through a 24 hour course, pass a 3 part 6 hour test that you need (IIRC) 85% on to pass, and judge a 5 round barn burner of a fight that you cannot get a single round wrong on. Then, shadow a judge for a few fight cards, and then actually sit in the judges seat and THEN, and only THEN can you say ANYTHING about how a fight was judged. Hearing people say things like round 4 should have been a 10-8 and that Gufstason CLEARLY won the first 3 is as maddening as spectators or coaches asking for points for back control when there are no hooks or when they get made when adults do ankle locks.
OK, enough about that. It isn't really jiu jitsu related, but I know a lot of people who follow jiu jitsu follow MMA so I had to get that out there. There was no controversy in the title fight on Saturday. NONE. The most controversial thing was Jon Jones corner trying to sneak Greg Jackson in as a 4th corner when the Ontario Commission only allows 4.
The Ontario Provincial Championship was announced this week! It's going down November 30th, in St. Catherines. I am undecided on wheter I like that it is in St. Catherines or not. I was quite looking forward to Kingston, which was the tentative location announced at the beginning of the year. I think that St Catherines is a very very long drive for anyone east of Toronto and I fear it will be the south western Ontario regional event with a few americans mixed in, instead of a true provincially attended event. That being said, it's a much shorter drive for me then Kingston, so I won't have to blow money on a hotel, which is always nice. They are giving away 4 trips to California, for the IBJJ Pans. That, in theory, should bring out some bodies! I'm a bit said it's 3 trips for the guys and only 1 for the ladies, but the numbers can justify it. Sort of. I think that there will be just as many blue belt girls and brown/black belt men and they should get their own trip, instead of being lumped with the purple/brown/black women.
This Saturday is the Return o the Zombie House!!! This is a great little event that is a completely different format from anything else out there. It's friendly but competitive and a great way to spend the afternoon. You can read about the event on their website, and on the facebook event. I am planing on heading down to body of our to check it out!
Grappling Industries has at least 2 more events on the Horizon. Montreal on October 5th, and Toronto on Oct 26th. In Montreal they are giving away 8 trips down the 401 to the big event on Oct 26th, where trips to California will once again be on the line. I won't be going to Montreal (firt One i've missed this year I think!) because I am getting in some much needed nature time with my sister. I will be at the Toronto event on October 26th and you should be to!
That's all for now! See you on the mats!
It also means they use the Mata Leao software to do the draws which is pretty sweet software. On two of the mats they had the new scoreboards running which use giant tv's and a laptop instead of the normal electronic scoreboards. It also recorded all the matches automatically. The one downside to this system was that is really slowed down the progress of the matches. It seemed like the table workers had to enter the names and division into the computer from the paper draw for every match which doesn't sound like it would take a long time, but it certainly delayed things since it had to be done in between each match.
The Acai Cafe was in attendance again. This was their second event and they have stepped up their game! They brought in a small size, which was great for kids, or weirdos who don't like a lot of acai and they brought in hemp seeds, cacao nibs, and shredded coconut. These added toppings were amazing and make the cafe even more amazing. They had to set up outside of the gym, which made them less visible, so I hope they still made lots of sales. You can check them out on facebook and suggest they add peanut butter for their next event :)
The tournament was scheduled to start at 9:30 and started around 9:50, not bad at all, considering they re-work all the kids brackets that morning because parents don't know how much their kids weigh and they never dq a kid for being over weight. I think that this is a great policy and I can totally forgive them for not starting on time because of this.
The kids turnout for this competition was great! I think, other then the ontario open, it was probably one of the biggest turnout for kids I have seen all year. The GTA classic does round robin for the kids, so they tend to get 3 or 4 fights. They also don't allow any subs for the younger ones, and progressively add subs as the kids get older and higher ranked. It's a bit complicated as a referee or coach, or even athlete to keep it all straight on what's allowed for which kid, but it generally keeps the kids safe while allowing them to do jiu jitsu. It ran a bit behind, but it was running solid throughout the day. There wasn't many times, that I saw, where nothing was going on on the mats.
There was a break around 1:00pm for a special presentation. Professor Scott Shilling was presented with his third degree by Mestre Sylvio da Matta Behring which was pretty cool to see. Scott has been a very active member of the community and has produced some top notch competitors as well. You can watch the video of the presentation on youtube.
I was refereeing at this event, and was pretty focused on that for the entire time I was there. I reffed a pretty wide variety of matches from 7 year old white belts to coloured belt kids, to masters white and blue belts. It was kind of nice to have such a variety. I stopped a few kids fights for armbars before they tapped on Saturday. Every single one was pretty upset about it, "I didn't tap", but the look on pretty much every single coaches face was that of understanding and appreciation for me keeping their students arms safe. I had one kid in a triangle/armbar and It very much looked like they tapped, but when I stopped it, they said that they did not tap. Everyone else seemed to think there was a tap as well, so I stood by that decision to stop the fight.
I got to work with the usual skilled crew of Ontario referees, including Ontario's newest black belt Jason Chin-Leung who is a really great referee. New to the team was Matthew Isaacs who is quite young but has been around jiu jitsu for a few years now. I didn't get to watch him to closely, but when ever I had a minute and looked over, he seemed to be handling himself very well. I'm looking forward to watching him develop as a referee.
While I was refereeing, one of the other res came around to give me a break so I could get some snacks, but he told me it was all cookies and sweats, so I passed. I really appreciate a tournament that provides snacks and water and drinks throughout the day. It helps us out a lot, it just happens to be that I follow a very low carb "diet" right now and can't eat any of that. Then, the most amazing thing happened around lunch time. Tony came to my mat with a giant caesar salad with chicken! He remembered from past events that I try not to eat pizza and crap when I am not being a fat /depressed/glutton and made sure I got one of the salads!! Man, nothing makes you feel more appreciated then that! It's seemingly small gestures like that that make all the nonsense that we as referees have to put up with a lot more tolerable.
The GTA classic had pretty nice event t-shirts, which they gave to the first 50 people registered, I think they even extended that to everyone registered before a certain date. They also had sweet prizes for the absolute winners: Samurai swords, and tournament hoodies. They were really nice hoodies to, well built and great looking style wise. I wish I could have competed and won them! That sounds like I think I would have won them if I competed, which is not what I mean. There were some very tough looking purple belts that I watched for a bit between reffing and I think I would have had some very excellent matches if I had been up to competing.
On a semi related note... A whole bunch of new purple belts have just been promoted! I hope they all come out to compete soon! You know who you are ladies!! We need to work together and compete together to help grow the scene. The purple belt ladies divisions in Ontario could be realy interesting very soon! There are some matchups I really want to see like Caitlin vs Tiffany and Tushara vs Kaitlyn. Someone make this happen!
I had to leave at 3:00 to go work at the UFC event at the ACC. I didn't need to be there till 5:00, but with the Gardiner being closed, I wanted to give myself some extra time. It's a good thing to, what google mats said should take 50 minutes, took just over 2 hours, before I gave up and parked and walked the last 2.5KM. My plan was to take the 401 to the DVP and take that down to whatever road that was before it hits the gardiner, but when it was stop and go at Eglington I abandon ship and took the streets all the way down. I was on queen st for over an hour!
The UFC was a pretty great experience, as working MMA events usually is. I did not get an opportunity to judge, but since reading all the shit people have been saying online about my colleagues, I am actually happy that I did not. It's so infuriating to see people who have NO IDEA what the are talking about saying people were robbed and going on about controversy or blind judges.
Here is what I say to all of you. You sit through a 24 hour course, pass a 3 part 6 hour test that you need (IIRC) 85% on to pass, and judge a 5 round barn burner of a fight that you cannot get a single round wrong on. Then, shadow a judge for a few fight cards, and then actually sit in the judges seat and THEN, and only THEN can you say ANYTHING about how a fight was judged. Hearing people say things like round 4 should have been a 10-8 and that Gufstason CLEARLY won the first 3 is as maddening as spectators or coaches asking for points for back control when there are no hooks or when they get made when adults do ankle locks.
OK, enough about that. It isn't really jiu jitsu related, but I know a lot of people who follow jiu jitsu follow MMA so I had to get that out there. There was no controversy in the title fight on Saturday. NONE. The most controversial thing was Jon Jones corner trying to sneak Greg Jackson in as a 4th corner when the Ontario Commission only allows 4.
The Ontario Provincial Championship was announced this week! It's going down November 30th, in St. Catherines. I am undecided on wheter I like that it is in St. Catherines or not. I was quite looking forward to Kingston, which was the tentative location announced at the beginning of the year. I think that St Catherines is a very very long drive for anyone east of Toronto and I fear it will be the south western Ontario regional event with a few americans mixed in, instead of a true provincially attended event. That being said, it's a much shorter drive for me then Kingston, so I won't have to blow money on a hotel, which is always nice. They are giving away 4 trips to California, for the IBJJ Pans. That, in theory, should bring out some bodies! I'm a bit said it's 3 trips for the guys and only 1 for the ladies, but the numbers can justify it. Sort of. I think that there will be just as many blue belt girls and brown/black belt men and they should get their own trip, instead of being lumped with the purple/brown/black women.
This Saturday is the Return o the Zombie House!!! This is a great little event that is a completely different format from anything else out there. It's friendly but competitive and a great way to spend the afternoon. You can read about the event on their website, and on the facebook event. I am planing on heading down to body of our to check it out!
Grappling Industries has at least 2 more events on the Horizon. Montreal on October 5th, and Toronto on Oct 26th. In Montreal they are giving away 8 trips down the 401 to the big event on Oct 26th, where trips to California will once again be on the line. I won't be going to Montreal (firt One i've missed this year I think!) because I am getting in some much needed nature time with my sister. I will be at the Toronto event on October 26th and you should be to!
That's all for now! See you on the mats!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)