Awards Ceremony from Short Weapons division, athletes include Saemi Cho of Virginia, Malory Gracenin of Ohio, Eddie Quintana of New Mexico.
raffi
(last updated: 8/23/04)
Awards Ceremony from Short Weapons division, athletes include Saemi Cho of Virginia, Malory Gracenin of Ohio, Eddie Quintana of New Mexico.
Dedicated judging staff hard at work.
Dedicated vendor... also hard at work.
Jamal Warren, I believe at the end of his 'Other Emptyhand' set.
Blurry picture of Nikki Coletta in the straightsword division
Tim Niiler's kickass exhibition at the masters' demo.
Emily Roos from Virginia in spear the 2nd day.
Guntis Uzarins of Latvia's staff.
Ivo Arsts, also of Latvia. I was really impressed with all three of the Latvian guys, they were really nice and friendly and from what I understand basically beside them, there is no other wushu in Lativa?!?
To me, the real stand out from the whole tournament was Chiu Mei-chiao from NY. If my memory serves me correctly, she not only did the regular forms (such as staff), she also did a pretty mean ditangquan and drunkensword. Her athleticism gives me hope for female competitive wushu in the US, which has been in a bit of a nadir since the '99 US Team.
Eddie Quintana's staff
And his three section staff.
The final awards ceremony of the regular competition. Thats Rachel Margalit with the Women's All-Around cup. Unfortunately I didnt' get any good pictures of her or her brother competing, both ended up taking the adult all-arounds! (very impressive showing, I hope they make it to Berkeley next year).
Results for the tournament can be found here: http://uswushuunion.com/nat2004/results/results.html
If I can take a second to make one editorial on my favorite subject...
Let me (AGAIN) remind everyone that DECENT competitions put their FULL results online. Good competitions do it within a matter of days. CRAPPY competitions run by inept or corrupt fools hide their results and refuse to post scores. If you go to a competition and pay your hard earned money (upwards of $50 or more sometimes these days!) for a $3 medal, the least the organizers can do is post the results online to give the athletes the recognition they've earned and to prove to everyone what kind of competition they're running. If you don't see results, complain! (early and often).