Tournament Recap: Kombat Classic, PG13

The Scene

While my jiu-jitsu may not be the best, I am a champion napper. It was this napping that lead to us (well, John) missing the appropriate 401 exit. So we arrived at the Brampton high school a touch later than was ideal. I did not sense the usual tournament buzz inside, and I was immediately left to my own devices as John went over to the weigh-in area.

My division wasn't supposed to start for another hour, (though it actually started two hours later), so I just loafed around for a bit. This was a time where I definitely missed having teammates/coaches around. Thankfully, a woman whose husband was competing (and whose 13-year old daughter trains) started chatting with me, so that was really nice. Eventually I did a little stretching and flow rolled with John so that he could warm up a bit.

I am not a fan of the warm-up area. Some people really make use of it, even going over their stand up strategy, but I do not like it. For the third time, I simply felt really sloppy and blah. I think I just don't like the idea of girls watching me and judging me as their competition.

The Brackets

As suspected, I just got moved into the heavy division. No big deal. The girls weren't that much bigger than me; one was about 13 lbs and the other about 20 lbs more. They were just pretty tall. (As for the smaller girls, I think there ended up being four of them.) Thankfully they did a round robin for the three of us, so I got at least two matches.

The Matches

Match 1.

I was up against Jennifer from BAMA. We got right into it and I pulled open guard, surprise surprise. I kept her in open and did the arm wrap. I think she went to her knees then and I tried to do the shin-across sweep, but she stuffed it. This started to worry me, cuz it felt like she was going to pass. I had to tell myself to just relax, and I simply reguarded. In fairly short order I ended up getting an armbar from guard.

I was satisfied with this win and felt like I played well and that the armbar was slick. Well. More slick than the armbar attempt from guard at the last tournament.

Lessons: Work on arm-wrap sweeps. Re-examine the way I pull guard.

Match 2.

My second match was against Anitra (from California!). It was her first tournament, same as Jennifer. I went against her after watching her and Jennifer, where Jennifer won by a number of points. I'll be honest -- I was confident I could beat her.

I pulled open guard and got the tripod sweep, but coming up in half-guard, Anitra got the underhook and had herself hoisted up on her bottom arm. For some reason I pretty much gave up on trying to pass cuz I just didn't feel like it was working or something, and she ended up on top and got the reversal points.

Then I was playing closed guard again and started working for the triangle. I had her arm stuffed I think, and then she stood. At this point I just had to set it up properly, but apparently I didn't. She was escaping so I transitioned to the armbar. She turned me over, but I maintained control and held it. She ended up rolling back over, where I finished it. This match was also over in fairly short order. (Though, not nearly as fast as the ~20 second arm triangle (?) from mount finish I saw one of the small girls do.)

I was not too pleased with this match. I think I was lucky to get away with what I did.

Lessons: Work on fricken triangles; I still do them fricken backwards!! Don't give up the top, silly! Ugh!

The three matches wrapped up the heavy division.

Me with some more awesome BJJ ladies.

Now for absolute. They announced the sign-up but it looked like only Jennifer and I were interested. Pretty much all the other girls had changed out already. I started to ask any bjj girl I saw if they were going to do aboslute, but my first attempt did not go well (awkwarddddd!) so I gave up, hahah.

Then I saw the winner of the light division back in her gi. As soon as I saw her I exclaimed, "You're doing the absolute!" I was so excited to get to go against another girl!

---Spoiler Alert--- My excitement was for naught.

I later learned that they didn't run a round robin for the three of us because there "wasn't enough time". So, Sarah (I think her name was) had a bye, and I would not end up going against her.

Ladies, how do they usually run divisions for you when there are only three people?

Match 3.

So my third match I was up against Jennifer again. And I pulled open guard again. The next major detail I remember is that she working to control my legs but she ended up yanking my pants down a bit along with....my underwear.

Annnnnd my bum was sticking out.

I said, "Oh!" And was terribly, terribly distracted by the fact that people could see my bum. For more than a few seconds, my mind was not on the match at hand, but on my butt. I thought I was way cooler than to let a little bit of skin distract me while in the throws of competition. But no. It did.

My own mental weakness.

So. With that, my open guard had a major breach and I ended up having to roll into turtle. I started to turn back into her to reguard, and finally -- THANK GOODNESS -- the ref stops us and tells me to go off the mat to tie up my pants. I said "thank you!!" like he had just saved my life or something.

I start back in turtle and start rolling into her again, and she gets top half with the cross face. She then works the pass where you go directly into mount. Well, this is where I stayed for three minutes. I blocked the mount the whole time. I think I maybe could have been more offensive to get into deep half or go out the back way. I tried a few times, but to no avail.

For the first time in a tournament match, I was starting to feel tired. I could tell Jennifer was getting tired too. She was audibly frustrated, to which I just chuckled, cuz we were both not good enough to do what we wanted, haha.

FINALLY, I reguard. But girl was not going to let me armbar her again. She stacked me and my sloppy armbar set up (I knew her arm was too far back, but I did it anyway). I think I rolled out and she was on my back but had zero control and I very easily turned back into her in top half. Then time ran out.

Jennifer won with like, 4 advantages to the one I think I got for the armbar attempt.

I was smiling at the end of this match. It was awesome to finally be on the defensive in a tournament and to work up a sweat. But I was also quickly disappointed about the failures in my mental faculties.

Lessons: Reconsider my tournament wardrobe or somehow exercise my mental finesse when BJJ becomes a little PG13. Stop letting the cross-face happen; (I have realized that I let it happen in regular rolling a lot). Work getting into deep-half.

Overall

A decent day overall. I'm glad I sucked it up and competed. It feels good to support the female competition scene. I didn't quite meet my unpublished goals, but I do have a renewed focus in training, and there is nothing handier than that.

Also, my sweetie did awesomely.