Warrior Challenge

This is what happens when you are a six-year-old Green Belt at a small in-house sparring tournament. There is no one as young as you who is as highly ranked as you, so you can either "spar down" with the little kids or "spar up" with the big kids. Neither Luke nor I thought that beating up four-year-old white belts was a good idea, so Luke "sparred up."

  And I mean UP! Look at the size of this kid! Logan is a nice boy, but he just kept reaching out and bopping Luke on the head because he was so much taller.

At least Luke's friend Cameron was there, so he had one match against someone only slightly bigger.

 But he also had to spar Thomas. Now, to be fair, Thomas should have been in another division, but there weren't enough older kids that showed up, so they just put everyone together. Thomas is also a very nice kid (he also won Student of the Year), but he's just huge compared to Luke. But this was the most awesome match because Luke WON!!! Due in large part to an extra point earned by his buddy Daniela:

 See, while Luke was sparring, Daniela was earning him extra points by playing games of skill with friends of the other students. Of course, since Luke was competing against giants, so was Daniela!
Poor thing, I think the whole event was pretty intimidating for her, but she was such a trooper and won several times! She was awesome at the balance games.

And when she got bored of watching the sparring, she hung out with Justin (we left Michael at home with Daniela's brother Joseph). When she got really bored, she found some of Joseph's gloves and put them on Justin's feet.

 Luke took some hard hits and he was mad that he kept losing. He basically cried through the last two rounds and then had a total meltdown when he lost the consolation round and got fourth place instead of third (even though some kids got nothing), but he really wanted a medal and you only get a medal for third place or higher.

I tried to console him by telling him that next year he would be bigger. He said "No, I won't. By next year, I'll probably be a blue belt and I'll be the smallest kid in the advanced division." Oh. Yeah. He's probably right. Maybe we'll skip the Warrior Challenge next year. If he does any "real" tournaments this spring, it should be fairer as they do it strictly by age.