Tournaments and New Teams and Injuries, Oh My!

Well, 2024 has definitely been a whirlwind!  It started off in arctic conditions in Chicago at the amazing Warrior Cup tournament in January, then on to Memphis for the Memphis Open in February.  Shortly after Memphis Open, we made some major changes to my training and I joined a new dojo.  My new dojo – Lexington Wado Ryu – focuses on traditional Wado-Ryu Karate, and I am learning a lot of the concepts and history behind my martial arts there.  At the same time, I began putting in some serious, focused effort on Wednesday afternoons with the amazing Averi Presley, working on my creative forms and weapons routines, plus I started taking tumbling classes to help me build my CMX

skills. 

In March, I competed in Cowboy Up, one of my favorite tournaments to date, out in San Antonio, Texas.  While I was there, I was contacted by Mrs. Dawn Kolbet, a lady who has been one of my tournament judges and has offered me lots of helpful advice during my tournament career.  She was coming to me as the new president of Team Heartland, with an offer to join the team!  Of course, I was super excited to be invited to join a national team! Then, I watched as Team Heartland recruited one top athlete after another

to join our team, and I felt super honored to be included in such a talented, dedicated group of athletes! 

Right after that, I was doing some focused training on my traditional weapons kata with Mr. David Chandler, who has been a long time encourager of my competition career.  After training for about two hours, we were just trying some fun stuff when I missed a landing and rolled my ankle.  It turned out to be a pretty bad sprain, that has kept me from training or doing much of anything for a couple of weeks now.  I was pretty

bummed about that until we had our first team meeting in April, and Team Heartland asked me to become a team captain!  To say that I was shocked would be a huge understatement!  I was really, deeply honored to accept a leadership role on such a

talented, hard-working, and impressive team.  It will be a big challenge for me to set a pace for these amazing athletes, but it’s a challenge I look forward to trying to fulfill! 

All in all, it’s been a crazy, wild ride of a year so far, but I’m excited about how the future is shaping up!  If I have learned anything in tournament competition this year, it’s that the black belt division is TOUGH COMPETITION!!!  I’ve got a lot of improving to do if I’m going to climb to the top of that pack, but that is exactly my goal: to keep improving until I’m on top, and then improve some more!