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 years point stick fighting champion was Ryan Monolopolus, who is now a two time Laban Laro champion. And this year new womens 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 years 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 years event, go to the Queen City Laban Laro website or Facebook group. And finally I would just like to thank everybody for making this years event a fun and exciting one.
You can find some pictures here on Bob Hubbard's Photography group on Face Book.
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 years point stick fighting champion was Ryan Monolopolus, who is now a two time Laban Laro champion. And this year new womens 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 years 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 years event, go to the Queen City Laban Laro website or Facebook group. And finally I would just like to thank everybody for making this years event a fun and exciting one.
You can find some pictures here on Bob Hubbard's Photography group on Face Book.
