by jon on Tue Jan 08, 2008 2:37 pm
Hi guys, as one of the tournament organisers I loved reading the comments, as that is the way we can improve things.
The sparring round robin thing was a bad idea, although only used where less than 6 students entred. It's always going to be unfair with low numbers in a group, as the only other way is to give one person a by straight into the medal places. But we will learn from that, that it was too time consuming.
The patterns thing was a good point, only grade or one before pattern allowed. However I'd like to think that a good Do-San or Dan gun is better than a poor hwa rang, if the technique is good, the pattern should not matter. I think the hardest part for the patterns was the style in which groups performed, for example judges for different groups of the apti, tend to favour there ways of teaching the patterns and so the judging had no real uniformity, as patterns in the APTI are done by ex-TAGB, and ITF students, and both perform differently.
A clasic example is the performer from IOW who had great technique but performed Ko Dang, Now as a judge I had never ever seen Ko Dan or performed it as it is not an ITF pattern, so although his technique was great, there is no way of me knowing if he'd gone wrong or made parts of the pattern up. Patterns will always cause conflict in tournaments unless the association unify the way in which we do them, as seen in groups such as PUMA. UKGT, GTUK etc.
Keep the comments comming, and if we get another go hopfully we can get it even better and fairer.
Cheers guys, by the way it was great to meet up with some of you.
Jon (Coventry APTI)