A good day

The tournament I went to watch this morning was interesting. I ended up being asked to help out as the scorekeeper for the kids' kata divisions and I saw a lot of cute kids. Afterward the grappling competitions were still going on and I watched some hard-fought matches in the gi and no-gi rings. Some things I noticed...

• It was well-attended. I was able to identify Madison Wrestling and Team Hopkins players. I also saw folks there from Brookhaven, Hazelhurst, Meridian, and of course, from McComb.
• The grappling I saw seemed to be mostly won on points rather than submissions. There was relatively little clearly-defined technical grappling.
• Again, just in the part I watched, there was almost no throws or takedowns. folks ended up on the mat either by mutual consent (they just knelt into the ground) or they fumbled a leg pick and ended up falling into a non-dominant position.
• I don't think I saw anyone choked to submission, though there were a lot of rear-naked chokes thrown as well as some guillotines and sleeve-wheel chokes. Funny thing - folks kept slipping out of these chokes. I'm not sure if it's because these competitors were that good at defending chokes or if they were that bad at applying them?
• The three skills you go to a grappling tournament to see: throws, chokes, and jointlocks. There were no attacks to the leg joints thrown at all, and there were no successful armlocks in the matches I saw.
• Lest I sound negative, let me re-iterate: it was a pretty good tournament - well attended, well-referreed, good attitudes from the competitors, and nobody got hurt (that I saw). That makes for a good day of fun.