CMAT 17

With InMat  and the Collegiates over...CMAT 17 was next!  While we capped the tournament at 450 competitors....we still managed to get 525 competitors on the floor somehow.   Some of that number was the fault of the University who insist we use an archaic pay vehicle.....rather than Paypal....which would be more efficient and accurate......but , no..........ah oh well.......at least we are not Wall Street!   This year's event brought us some international competitors from the Phillipines, China, Moscow and Canada.  This I feel is in the right direction........I would like to see CMAT attract more countries to our event....this way our athletes have a chance to compete against high level competitors.......Asia has moved far ahead of everyone because they have so many major wushu competitions there.  To get better one must constantly raise the bar. Inspirational, was Kenny Perez who put all old guys on notice..........seniors rock!  Kenny competed in Bagua and Nanquan.........for those who don't know him, he was on the 1986 US Wushu Team with me......and that was a long time ago!!  Go Kenny....also, props to David Dorian Ross....who competed in Senior Taiji.........he is still the only US Team Member to win a silver medal in Taiji.....back in 1991 at the 1st World Games.  The students of CalWushu did a great job of organizing the event and were able to incorporate many lessons learned from past events.  we had 125 judges who came in on three differebt shifts....no one had to work more than two shifts.........and they tried to have everyone do just one when possible.  Also, excellent was keeping parents and spectators off the floor..........it made it possible to move around easily and to avoid wushu moms who want to argue about the scores.............my favorite complaint was that one kid was too cute and so it was unfair...........yeah!  Special thanks go to Emilio for organizng the Nandu competitioin..........and also to all the judges who stayed to the end.....including Li Jing, Johhny Jang, William Dere, Viet Lee, Matt Wong, Liu Yu, Kai Chang..........and many others....it's kind of fuzzy now........I had only been on the floor for 16 hours.........and looked at a few hundred competitiors forms!!

Jeffery annd David is from my Uncle's White Crane School came to help with the Traditional Wushu divisions.  Jeffery also announced the publication of my Uncle's book on The Techniques and History of the White Crane System.  for those interested I will have copies soon!

The Judges from the Jing Wu Academy, students of the legendary Jack Man Wong who fought with Bruce Lee  One of these days I will have to tell the other side of that story!

We opened CMAT, with demos by the Phllipine Youth Wushu Team.

Butterfly with the Pudao.

Canada and Moscow also performed for the Opening Ceremony.

525 competitors showed up forCMAT....this is the warm up area in the main Arena of Haas.

The floor control center......checked all events and tracked results.

Kenny Perez warming up for Nanquan.  Go Kenny!!  Seniors rock!! The Phillipines Youth Team did very well in competition.

Whew....are we beat.......this at 10pm!  Always good to see Li Jing...has done a lot for Calwushu.......and for the promotion of Wushu in this country.

A big thanks also goes out to the Shaolin Monks who stayed to judge until the end!

Johnny and Lily helped with the Internal Rings all day!

It's now Dr.Quan Nguyen......he was one of our favorite instructors from Calwushu Generation 2.  He was an excellent fighter and lead some of the toughest workouts!!

A gold medal for Ryan for his tradtional Raise Blocking Spear from the Northern Shaolin system.

This was the next day, at East Ocean in Emeryville....the Dim Sum was great as always....especially after getting some well deserved sleep.  Thanks again to all the judges.......Emilio. Viet, Li Jing, Wang Wei, Matt....and the members of SCWA!!

For more pictures from the tournament do check out the SF Wushu Team Website....sfwushu.net.  It was also good to see the Quanman.....my instructor from generation 2 of Calwushu..........and a congradulations to Cindy and Eugene for tying the knot........and good to see our Gypsy friend Mark Moran.....where are you going next??

And now for a word from the real world..........thanks to the  Navy Seals for saving the life of a merchant Captain.............pirates.....sorry matey but you guys gotta go!!  But please, we don't need another war!

Ok enough for that............but sometimes we need to check out how the real world is doing.........well I just polished off my income tax forms...................I don't mind paying just not AIG or Chrysler!!  Bye all.....CMAT is over!!