Showing posts with label Montreal Pro Trials. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Montreal Pro Trials. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 March 2014
Montreal Pro Trials: Feb 22nd 2014 Recap
A couple weeks ago, we went to Montreal for the pro trials. For the first time since I can remember, the drive there wasn't horrible. Last year, it was a nightmare, at one point, we though we weren't g-going to make it,even though we left on Thursday night!
We did hit traffic about 5 minutes into the drive, there was an accident on the highway just outside of hamilton, but nce we got past that, we decided to jump on the 407, since we were getting into rush hour time, and rush hour, on the 401 through Toronto, is not a lot of fun at all.
We stayed at the Universal Hotel, which is right across the road from the venue. We like to stay here, because it's price is comparable to the mid-town, but has free parking, and is super convenient for walking to the venue. When the tournament was 2 days it was even better because we could just go back and forth through out the day.
We headed over to the mid-town for weighins around 3pm, ended up parking on the street, and paying 9 bucks, which is cheaper then hotel parking, but still pretty ridiculous for a couple hours of street parking. The worst part about paying or a couple hours of parking, was that we didn't use most of it, that's because, after we weighed in we attempted to get dinner at the hotel restaurant.
we got sat down pretty quickly, but that was it, we were there for literally 20 minutes and none of the restaurant staff even glanced at us. It's like they were purposefully avoiding even looking at our table or walking near bye. It was ridiculous. we gave up, left, and ate dinner at our own hotel.
Our hotel restaurant was under construction, but they just had all the tables in one of the conference rooms and it was a-ok. We got there before they were technically open, but they sat us and fed us anyway, which was nice. The restaurant isn't cheap, but the food is pretty good and the service is decent all the staff we have dealt with in the times we have stayed spoke English well enough, and put up with our weirdness well.
Anyway... back to the event. The level of jiu jitsu was really high, in the ladies divisions especially. There were way more ladies then in any of the past Montreal trials. There were 3 brown/black divisions and a light and heavy purple absolutes. The two blue belt absolutes were way bigger then in the past as well.
One competitor that stood out to me, in the women's division was Dominyka, She's from Marcelo Garcia's school and has fantastic jiu jitsu. She just got her brown belt a couple weeks before worlds last year, and won her division there, she won her division at the trials this year, AND the absolute.
The men's brown/black divisions were split up for the first time (that I can remember anyway) this year as well. The brown belts got 2 absolutes and the black belts had a bunch of weight classes. You can see all the results on the trials website here.
I ended up going home with a silver medal. I won 1 fight, lost 1. My first fight went pretty well, I actually worked on some things I've been training and was able to finish the fight with an armbar. We did have a bit of a situation mid-match though. We were near the edge and I was working to take her back. I had a collar grip but it wasn't high, and we ended up mostly out of bounds, the ref stopped us, and tried to re-start us in the middle, but her coach was having none of it. The ref ended up giving her 2 penalties for delaying the match before she got back into position. There beef was that we were "in a submission" and should be stood up and me get 2 points. But, all I had was 1 collar grip on her back, and it wasn't near a sub. She got out of that pretty quick and in the transitions I got the armbar.
My second fight was against Yacinta, who is awesome. I pulled guard, and she smashed through it to half guard. I almost got a kimura, but I held on to it way to long when it wasn't viable anymore, and it went down hill, quickly, after that. I ended up in a triangle for about 4 minutes till the end of the match. Not my best match by any means, but I learned some things to work on from it and my Jiu Jitsu will be better for it.
The tournament started on time, but ended up behind schedule by the end of the day. We left around 7 and the blue absolute was just getting started. Generally, the event ran really well.
Weighins and checkin were pretty quick, but strange. We had to weigh in with our gis, but it was day before weighins. To me, the only reason to weigh in with a gi on is, because the IBJJF does weighins right before the division, so t gt through it quickly and get the matches running, you have your gi on so you don't have to go change. It's weird to require a gi when weighing in the day before. It's not really bad, just strange. They weren't even inspecting the gis at weigh ins, that happened at the venue before the matches to. So you could weigh in with one gi, and compete in another.
This year was the first time they did the event all in one day which made for a really long day. Especially because there were more kids competing, and a lot more masters then in the past. They gave out 5 kids trips, which were "to be decided by the organizer". Personally, I'm not sure kids should be competing for trips at a scale like this, it is a cool opportunity for them but it's a lot of pressure and also puts a lot of financial pressure on the parents as well. I don't think there should be masters either. They can't win a trip and it adds a lot of time to the day. Either get rid of the divisions, or give the trips!
On the way home, we discovered something horrible The onRoute service centres on the 401 only have tim hortons open after 9pm on weekends. During the week they are open much later, but apparently, on weekends, they all shut down at 9, even the convenience stores aren't open. We ended up stopping in Brockville to grab some pizza hut. It was a weird pizza hut, that didn't follow the same promos that most of the pizza huts do. But, it was quick and we pretty much always get pizza after competing.
Te drive home was really uneventful, the guys slept most of the drive, as usual, and there wasn't snow to deal with which was amazing. We made great time, even with our 2 gas stops and the pizza stop.
There were a bunch of photographers at the event. One even got a few decent shots of me! You can see that album here. It's linked one one of the pics of me, but there are hundreds of pics in the album. The talented Erin Herle's (who was multi-tasking at the event, winning the light purple absolute, and taking amazing pics) album can be found here. She worked with Martin to take pics for Gracie Mag.
I also took a bunch of pics, but my camera battery was dying, so I didn't get many. You can check them out on facebook if you like.
That's all for now! See you on the mats!
Thursday, 14 February 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
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!
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!
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