A few weeks ago my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym held a small scrimmage. My coach invited a few other clubs based in Hokkaido and we all got together in a local University's dojo for some friendly match-making. Since the BJJ membership in Hokkaido is pretty small, competitions are few and far between. So, this was a great chance for everyone to get more fight experience.
Normally, the brackets are comprised of different weight-classes and experience levels (grouped by belt color). But because of the low numbers, the tournament was divided up into three divisions sans weight-classes.
1. Beginner-Intermediate Gi: This was a combination of white belt, blue belt, and purple belt fighters. Jane and I both competed in this division (Jane is a white belt and I'm a blue belt). There was only one other girl (blue belt), who is actually also from our club, so Jane and her really didn't experience anything new. But it still provided a good opportunity to work through competition jitters. Since Jane's opponent was of a higher skill level, the results were pretty much expected, but Jane did her best. You can also hear my terrible coaching here. :)
I managed to defeat my first two opponents (a white belt and a fellow blue belt) via triangle choke.
During my third match I was paired up with a purple belt. It turned out to be a very close fight. But I ended up losing due to an advantage point (used to break ties).
The former High School Judo champion of Hokkaido ended up defeating my adversary in the next match and took the tournament.
2. Advanced Gi: The brown and black belts were put together for the advanced portion of the scrimmage. A guy from our club actually won this portion of the day.
3. No-Gi Grappling: I can probably count the number of times I've fought without wearing a Gi on my two hands. But I was given the opportunity to obtain more experience so I decided to throw my hat in the ring. I was pretty out of my element and lost my only match pretty badly. I did manage to score a few points though. Unfortunately, our camera ran out of room so we weren't able to catch a good clip.
In related news, we've got another Naginata tournament to prepare for in a weeks! Gotta get back to training!
-Ryan
