| Submitted by: SportMartialArts.com staff |
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| Jackson Rudolph proudly displays his Gold Medallion |
COMPETE Nationals is the only west coast event on the NASKA world tour. The event always brings appearances by top competitors on the circuit as well as past competitors from the area who are checking out how the circuit is doing today. One of those past competitors who showed up to the 2010 COMPETE Nationals was Steve Terada, a former top extreme competitor who is now making a name for himself as a dancer with his dance team's win on TV's America's Best Dance Crew. And a current competitor who had taken a break for awhile was back as Rudy Reynon made the successful transition from child karate superstar to adult contendor at the event.
Held February 26-26, 2010 in Ontario, California, the weather at the COMPETE Nationals was erratic as were the weapons performances. On Friday it was warm and sunny but on Saturday it was raining hard - a great day to be inside competing. Lots of the top seeds at the event dropped their weapon during their competition. However, these disappointments were tempered by the amazing performances of many of the local competitors who stepped it up to assure that the seeds realized there were many people looking to take those top spots away.
Friday evening included the men's team sparring competition and it was Team All Stars' line-up of Jack Felton, Willie Hicks and Raymond Daniels who came in the favorites and left with the win. Team Full Circle did not sport a team at the event but two of the Team Full Circle fighters ended up judging the team sparring event as Ross Levine and Victor Suarez kept a watchful eye on all fights as they called points from the corner judging positions.
As expected, the final match for men's teams came down to Team All Stars and Team Paul Mitchell. Felton and Hicks did their jobs well, defeating Mike Pombeiro and Alex Lane respectively. It made it all that much easier for Daniels who actually lost his match against Greg Betlach but it didn't matter in this team division.
Men's team sparring was our first glimpse of a returning competitor - Chad Cannon - who had injured himself at the 2006 NBL Supergrands by breaking his foot doing a barrel roll during a sparring match. He's back, in college, representing Team Gypsy and looking like he has been training as his fighting skills were strong and his form a little wobbly but still full of good tricks. A little clean up and he will definitely be keeping everyone on their toes.
California dominated in adult fighting on Saturday at the event. For the men, Raymond Daniels, Mike Pombeiro and Jack Felton all made it to the finals for men's sparring. The lone, non-Californian was Victor Suarez of Florida. For the women, it was all West Coast with Tara Van Deusen and Jessica Covarrubias going to the stage.
In the executive divisions, it was strange not to see Californian Drew Christian upsetting some of the traveling NASKA contingent. Every year he would show up to knock a few seeds off their throne and take a divisional and many times, executive grand champion win. Christian passed away unexpectedly in 2009 and left a hole in the competition at COMPETE's this year. He was missed but not forgotten.
With the support of the Red Dragon schools, COMPETE Nationals always has a ton of demo teams competing. In the finals for the black belt demo team competition, local Team Compete took on the seasoned Team 100% Performance. With a number of injuries on the team, 100% wasn't actually using 100% of its performers. David Armstrong, Jess Goldman and Jeremy Epstein had to fill in for almost every part of the demo. They managed not to collapse and to win the title.
In the underbelt demo team competition, Team Red Dragon faced off against Team Chozen. Chozen featured a cute little girl who spun a bo and pulled the performance together. But cuteness didn't win against the techniques of Team Red Dragon as Red Dragon was crowned the victors.
The junior forms and weapons competitors were competing not only for an overall grand championship title in the NASKA grands but also a chance to compete for the COMPETE Nationals Gold Medallion title. In the youth creative/extreme weapons grand championship, Dayna Huor (kamas), Micah Karns (bo), Jackson Rudolph (bo) and Mackensi Emory (kamas) were all competing. Karns dropped his bo but Huor and Emory were strong - but not strong enough to overcome the wicked spins of Rudolph.
Samantha Suddeth, Jessi Pelligrino, Andrew Franklin and Shahin Jahan-vash all faced off for the youth traditional weapons grand championship. Jahan-vash wowed the hometown crowd with his double sword performance and took the title.
Micah Karns came back for the youth creative/extreme forms grand championships in an effort to redeem himself after his weapons drop earlier. Mackensi Emory and Stephanie Figueroa both stumbled a bit which left little Jacob Pinto as his competition. "Pinto Bean" whipped out a cartwheel double full, a really high Jesus flip and some other twisty thing that Nick didn't know the name of. Pinto definitely had the higher difficulty rating but a couple of missteps and Karns' cleaner performance took the win.
In the youth traditional forms grand championship, all the performances were Japanese-based. Jackson Rudolph was back as was Dayna Huor. They were joined by Amanda Chen and Jacob Ellis. Ellis was able to exhibit the stronger chi this evening as the judges chose his performance.
For the adult forms and weapons competition, the finals turned into the gold medallion challenge all around. The regular grand championships were run off during the day so every adult competitor in the finals was already a grand champion with at least one title. In adult forms, Scott Wu (men's traditional winner), Caitlin Dechelle (women's extreme winner), Marc Canonizado (men's extreme winner) and Jessica Brew (women's traditional winner) all went head-to-head.
For adult weapons, Scott Wu (traditional weapons winner), Caitlin Dechelle (women's extreme weapons winner) and Kalman Csoka (men's extreme weapons winner) were the challengers. Who won adult forms and weapons will be revealed later - for now, we'll let our readers take a wild guess!
The kids had one more competition for the evening and that was the gold medallion challenge. Shahin Jahan-vash, Jackson Rudolph, Micah Karns and Jacob Ellis were all vying for the title. It was a close one that came down to Jahan-vash and Rudolph. Rudolph ekked out the win by only a slight margin.
Normally Tara Van Deusen shows up at COMPETEs about six weeks after having had a child or a few weeks after major surgery. She then sweeps her division and ends up in the run offs or grands. This year she was in the grands but she luckily had not gone through any major life changes just prior to competition. She faced Jessica Covarrubias for the title. In order to assure a little drama came into play, Van Deusen twisted her ankle while up 6-2. However, she continued and turned it into a showcase for herself, with a sweeping 7-3 win.
The men's grand championship had good fights from start to finish. Victor Suarez and Mike Pombeiro battled down to the wire in the semi-finals. The match went into overtime with Pombeiro scoring the final victory point. Raymond Daniels faced his training partner and friend Jack Felton in the other semi-final match. This was a very calculated fight and it was clear that friendship was not part of the thought-process for these guys. Felton ran Daniels right out of the ring and off the stage at one point. In the end, Daniels narrowly won with a 5-4 score.
The final fight between Daniels and Pombeiro was a major endeavor. The normally flamboyant Daniels was serious as a heart attack as he faced Pombeiro and Pombeiro was definitely not backing down. The fight started slow but eventually Daniels found his pace and was able to score enough to get a comfortable lead. Despite everything Pombeiro threw, the judges were not helping him. In the end, it was Daniels with a 6-2 win.
Were you able to guess the adult winners for forms and weapons? If you guessed Kalman Csoka for weapons, you were spot on. His double sword performance gave him another grand championship title at the event. He earned three 10s from the judges as well.
Scott Wu was trying for his fourth grand championship title at COMPETEs. But Jessica Brew was trying for her second grand championship title too. The prior year's titles were possible because men and women did not compete against each other before. In 2010, the new Gold Medallion challenge for the adults came down to Wu and Brew and Brew toppled Wu for the victory.
A mixture of old and new was at the 2010 COMPETE Nationals. If you missed it, you missed some great fun and great competition. Check out videos and photos online to see what you missed and make a plan to COMPETE next year!
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