24 hour countdown has begun

This morning @ 5:55am reality began to set in. As I waited for the boys to get dressed for our morning practice session, it hit me that tomorrow is T day (lol). The unnerving thing about the tournament is the unknown factors. There are 6-7 schools participating in this fall tournament. With that many schools, we have no idea who we will be competing against.

The pattern competition will present us the opportunity to do our best with what we've learned over the last couple of weeks. We will be competing by age groups in a bracket type of format. Each competitor will do their pattern in groups of three. Then the top four competitors will compete head to head. The 1st place and 4th place will face off, followed by the 2nd & 3rd place, and finally the winners of these two face offs will compete against each other to decide 1st place. Competing in this way will be new for Emily, and I look forward to seeing how she reacts.

The point sparring is a different beast all together. Not knowing your opponent creates a void for planning any strategy..........same basic format as pattern competition with a couple of big exceptions. During this part of the competition we will get hit & kicked. Same bracket arrangement, draw to see who faces who, then winners face off to whittle down to 1-3rd places. On a personal note, I am really hoping that this right knee holds together! The swelling has gone down a bit and it's not as stiff as it was. Rapid healing is not occuring for this "old dude".

We have trained as hard as possible, against the best at our facility, so now it is up to us. Like I said before "unnerving"!!!