# Laban Laro 8 and 45th Birthday Celebration!



## Datu Tim Hartman (May 18, 2010)

The other weekend I hosted the  Queen City Laban Laro VIII and celebrated my birthday at the same time.   Both events were a very enjoyable experience.  I have seen many martial  artists have their body destroyed by the time they reach my age from  improper training, over aggressive sparring, or just plain old age.  I  feel that I am very fortunate that I only have little dings, but overall  I am in good health.  

Running a  tournament on the same weekend as your birthday could be a formula for  disaster, but everything this year ran like clockwork.  This is the  second time we have split off all of the Filipino divisions from the  main tournament into its own tournament.  We hosted the tournament at  our school, Horizon martial Arts, which was more that sufficient room to  host this event.  We decided to run just two rings for the afternoon  which worked out quite well.  In addition to our normal local support,  we had schools from West Virginia, Minnesota and Toronto, Canada.  

The divisions were  running fast and furious starting with our youth competitors.  The ages  of our competitors ran from four to fifty four years old.  All of the  divisions were jam packed with excitement and none of the age groups  failed to entertain the spectators.  This years point stick fighting  champion was Ryan Monolopolus, who is now a two time Laban Laro  champion.  And this year new womens champion is Valerine Bachowski.   This year we added some new features which included a rebate program for  the instructors bringing their students, paid judging and electronic  score keeping to our event.   

After the event I  followed up with many of the participants who had nothing but rave  reviews.  We are looking forward to next years event which will be May  14, 2011.  We will be adding double stick sparring as well as knife  fighting to our divisions.  To keep updated on next years event, go to  the Queen City Laban Laro website or Facebook group.  And finally I  would just like to thank everybody for making this years event a fun  and exciting one.

You can find some pictures* here*  on *Bob Hubbard's Photography* group on Face Book.


----------



## Dan Anderson (May 21, 2010)

45th birthday...you're still a kid.  

Dan


----------

