# Review of the Queen City Laban Laro



## WT_ATL (Mar 20, 2006)

This weekends Queen City Laban Laro Tournament was a great success! There was just under 100 participants and representation from 8 different martial arts schools from New York and New Jersey. 

More importantly, this was a great venue for Filipino Martial Arts as a whole. 

The Queen City Laban Laro, was actually one of several regional qualifiers leading up to a National Tournament hosted by the *NAFMA-North American Federation of Martial Arts.* Consequently, the event was structured as an Open Martial arts tournament. For the majority of the participants and spectators, it would be their first introduction to Filipino Martial Arts. It was amazing to see how well the participants and spectators adopted the new art. 

It was especially entertaining to see the 5-6 year olds compete. Although many of these kids had never stick sparred before they seemed to have a natural affinity for it. Many parents who visited the SMAK-Stiks booth were looking for more information how they could get their kids started in FMA. 

On a side note, Rex and I would like to thank Datu Hartman and Janice for opening up their home to us and their hospitality, but more importantly, for organizing and running an awesome tournament. 

We also got a chance to meet Mr. Bob Hubbard. Well definitely be talking more to Bob on some future business opportunities. By the way, great artwork Bob.


Lastly, Id like to thank Master Jose Torres, the Executive Director of NAFMA, and his organization, for their support and involvement. Based on the turn out of the Queen City Laban Laro, the Nationals in May should be a great event.

For more information regarding the Nationals, go to: http://www.leaguelineup.com/welcome.asp?url=nafma

Thanks,

Winston.


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## Brian R. VanCise (Mar 20, 2006)

Thanks for the review!

Brian R. VanCise
www.instinctiveresponsetraining.com


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## Bob Hubbard (Mar 23, 2006)

Thank you.   It was a pleasure chatting with you both. Wish I could have stuck around a bit more afterwards.

Heres a couple pics from the event. I took 144 shots, unfortunately I had some technical issues that have caused the pics to not meet my satisfaction. (Short version, under exposed due to not using my flash so as to not bother the competitors.)

I'll be adding more as I get them processed to my photo gallery, but heres 4 for now.


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## WT_ATL (Mar 24, 2006)

We're finally starting to push up some of the videos we took over the past year. This first video shows a couple of 5 year olds from the tournament. 

http://www.smakstiks.com/media.php

Kids are Awesome!

--Winston


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