Shiai:

In individuals, I'm paired first against another mudansha who plays a little close for my tastes. I manage to score a men off of him. But then I tend to play too close, hoping to burn time rather than continuing to be aggressive without opening myself to his attacks. He scores a kote, somehow. Then, with time trickling away, he manages to pull off a hiki-do, which is rather impressive in that division. So I lose, but could have easily won if I had continued to pressure him, rather than sticking in tsuba-zeriai. I need to remember than in sanbon-shobu, ippon is not enough.

In team matches, I am sempo on the A-team. In our first match, against a Midwest College team, again I'm drawn in too close, in tsubazeriai rather than at good old issoku-itto. This means that it is difficult to score, and so while I do manage to push him out of bounds for hansoku at one point, eventually he lands some sort of men at the edge of the shiai-jo. Although this is scored by the people at the desk as a men for our side, which is odd to say the least. Luckily, we win two and draw two and win the match.

Our second match is against a college team from Canada. As with most college teams, they don't have much in terms of rank or experience. I land a men, and we sweep the rest of the matches. My opponent is quite aggressive but lifts too high. He also does not have much follow through. I reduce my kiai and landed my strike with decent timing, though I don't remember much else.

Our last match-up is against another Midwest college team, but one of the professorial rather than student bent. This means that they outrank us. My sempo match is against a sandan, and I am tempted to try and draw him, and indeed that would have given us victory. Instead I do my best, and we exchange a few ai-men. At one point I go out of bounds, but we have both completed a strike and are trying to out-kiai each other. It's only a matter of time before he lands a big kihon-men. Our second match we also lose as our shiaiest player wrestles around with this opponent, but his opponent hits a solid kote. So we're down 2-0. Luckily, our chuken and our fukusho both win their matches. So it's tied 2-2 and down to taisho. In this match, our sensei is up against a jodan-sensei, and time runs out with neither side able to score, though sensei down on hansoku, as our opponent is rather pushy. So it goes to tie-breaker. Our shiai player goes up. He tries to tsuki the taisho in jodan, but is drawn in too deep. A big katate-men comes down and it's all over for us.

So, it's a performance not unlike last year's for me, at least--scored two ippon, but lost all my matches but one. I need to learn when to shoot for hikiwake, and when to go all out.