| Submitted by: SportMartialArts.com staff |
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| Kalman Csoka put on an amazing weapons performance in the Ocean States finals. |
It was rain - lots of rain - that almost caused the cancellation of the 2010 Ocean State Grand Nationals in Warwick, Rhode Island the weekend of April 9-10, 2010. The week prior to the event, Rhode Island was hit with such torrential rain that an entire shopping mall was flooded just down the street from the venue for the event.
As if the rain wasn't enough, the city was the next obstacle as a failure of the tournament hotel to obtain a permit to build left the Ocean State promoters, Don and Christine Rodrigues, without a facility for the event with only a few weeks left. Lots of manuevuering, help from friends and scrambling finally ended with a facility for the event across the street from the tournament hotel. Although it wasn't exactly what the promoters had anticipated when working with the hotel, it allowed the event to run without any real problems.
And the event certainly ran well! Friday night's competition started on time and ended at a decent hour. The Saturday eliminations ran even better - starting promptly at 9:00 a.m. and finishing by 3:30 p.m. as advertised. Considering the large divisions, the way the event ran was definitely an accomplishment - it was action all day Saturday with virtually no rings pausing throughout the day.
The Ocean State promoters persevered to assure the event would happen, and the people who turned out to support the event brought some fantastic energy to the event. Friday night boasted the creative and extreme weapons and forms competition and the men's team sparring division. In adult weapons, it was as if no one could hold onto his or her weapons. A couple of divisions were nearly won by default because everyone dropped a weapon.
Matt Emig made his return to the ring after a 21 month break due to a severly broken leg. At the time of the break, there was concern that Emig might not be able to compete again. However he showed that not only can he compete but he can also win - winning creative weapons on Saturday. It seemed that the thing stopping him from winning was not his healed injury but the dropping of his weapons as he let go of a chuck in musical weapons.
Men's team sparring boasted twelve teams with a team all way from England in the mix. Team Full Circle showed its intent to dominate by entering three teams and having two of the three make it to the final four in the division along with Team Paul Mitchell and Team Next Level. The two Full Circle teams faced off with the team of Jason Grenier, Hamed Firouzi and Cass Sigmon being eliminated while Niko Negron, Jason Bourelly and Ross Levine advanced. Team Next Level, which has been making a real name for itself in men's team fell to Team Paul Mitchell's Greg Betlach, Mike Pombeiro and Travis Plowden. In the final match up, Team Full Circle started with a tie score between Greg Betlach and Niko Negron but then Full Circle pulled way ahead on the back of Jason Bourelly's 7-0 defeat of Mike Pombeiro. Ross Levine kept his team's lead and Full Circle took the men's team sparring title for the 2010 Ocean State Grand Nationals.
Finals
With the new NASKA grand championship categories for 2010, promoters have choices in what to put on the finals stage. Many have elected to only have youth overalls in weapons and forms but the Ocean State Grand Nationals decided to give more kids a chance on the stage by separating the creative/musical/extreme grands from the traditional grands for forms and weapons.
Out of the four different youth grand championship competitions, Dayna Huor of Team Paul Mitchell appeared in three of them. Unfortunately she was not able to turn all those chances into a win but steady presence is indicative of her talent in a wide variety of categories. Huor's competition in youth traditional forms was Mackensi Emory, Kyle Montagna and Andrew Franklin. We had watched Montagna in the daytime run offs for his age group and his strength and power was remarkable. He carried it over into the finals to get the win this evening.
In the youth creative/musical/extreme forms grand championships, it was Huor, Samantha Smith, Jacob Pinto and Micah Karns. Although Smith advanced in age she's still fairly compact and uses it to her advantage with acrobatic skill. Pinto is always exciting but a fall on a trick took him out of the running. Karns has exploded onto the scene in 2010 and took another grand championship title, his second of the year.
The kids traditional weapons grand championship made it quite clear that the new weapon of choice is the sword. Jacob Pinto, Stephanie Figueroa and Tahna Dow all sported swords for their performances. Shahin Jahan-vash tried to one-up them with a double sword performance. This evening Figueroa got the nod from the judges as she took this major win.
In the youth creative/musical/extreme weapons competition, Dayna Huor was back but this time she and Jackson Rudolph made the rare mistake of dropping their weapons. Cole Eckert had competed first with no mistakes in his high energy performance. The final competitor was Mackensi Emory and every hoped she could make it through without a drop to give Eckert at least some kind of challenge. She made it and the scores were very close with Eckert winning with the vote of 4 judges to 3.
Four men made it to the stage for the men's sparring grand championships. Three of these men represented Team Full Circle and one represented Team Paul Mitchell. In the first semi-finals fight, teammates Ross Levine and Hamed FIrouzi faced each other. Levine over powered the smaller Firouzi and ended with a 7-1 win. Mike Pombeiro of Team Paul Mitchell got another chance at his nemesis Jason Bourelly in the second semi-final round. Pombeiro could not make it past Bourelly's kicks and Bourelly took the win with a 7-2 score. The final fight would be a repeat from the grand championships at March's Amerikick Internationals with Ross Levine facing Jason Bourelly.
After the men's semi-finals, the women took the stage to fight for the grand championships. Nicole Pelland had quite a dramatic trip to the stage. She won her division and then faced and narrowly defeated Team Paul Mitchell's newest female member, Chelsey Nash, to advance to the stage. What made it more heart wrenching for Nash is that it was her birthday to boot!
The final fight came down to Pelland who faced Europe's Mieke Hink. Hick was the winner of the 30 and over championship and then defeated Melanie Ortiz to advance to the finals. In the grand championship match, Pelland had the support of the hometown crowd. Pelland fell behind after a couple of Hink kicks scored and it looked like Pelland might be doomed. But she mounted a comeback and was able to score the winning point at the buzzer!
The men's fighting grand championship was a rematch between Levine and Bourelly. Bourelly started the scoring with a two point kick but he couldn't get anything else to happen as Levine calmly scored four points to win the match 4-2 and take another grand championship title.
The adult forms competition was short and sweet. For the women, Caitlin Dechelle and her extreme form was crowned champion over Nikki Stanley's incredible flexibility. Rudy Reynon turned off the music and went all extreme for his grand championship title in men's forms. He defeated the intense traditional performance of William Cornell.
For the special divison offered by the Ocean State Grand Nationals, it was an international team challenge between Team Europe and Team USA. This five-man, one woman match up turned out to be quite fun and interesting to watch as the audience was able to see some of the European fighters that are often talked about but rarely seen in the USA.
In round one, Mieke Hink and Nicole Pelland had a rematch. This time it was Hink with the 3-1 win to give Europe a 2 point lead. After this, Team USA's men started to take control. Drew Neal faced Greg Betlach in the next fight and Betlach calmly punched and ridgehanded his way to a 7-3 win to give Team USA an 8-6 lead.
Damon Sansum fought the formidable Ross Levine in the third round. Sansum could not keep Levine from a 6-2 win to give Team USA a healthy 5 point lead overall. Robbie Hughes is name that is dropped a lot when talking about memorable English fighters so it was a great chance to see him in action. Hughes has a lot of speed but his size made it difficult for him to topple the legs of Jason Bourelly in the fourth round. Bourelly pushed Team USA further ahead with his 7-3 victory over Hughes.
Czech fighter Zvonko Gribl makes the long trek to the United States more often than most European fighters and we've seen his kicks before. He faced the long legs of Alex Lane in round five with Team USA in the lead by 9 points. Gribl went to work but Lane was aggressive and was able to score 5 points to Gribl's two.
The final round pitted Michael Page of England against Mike Pombeiro for Team USA. Page is probably the most talked about of the European fighters at this event. His reputation of having attitude in the ring preceeded him and he had already provided some excellent footage for our SportMartialArts.com camera during men's team fighting and sparring eliminations. In team sparring, although Team Europe did not make it to the finals, Page managed to knock out one opponent with a tornado round kick in an early round. He also dropped Jason Grenier in his individual point sparring division even though Grenier got back up and won the round. So coming into the finals, Page was 2 for 3 in dropping his opponents in matches.
Page faced Pombeiro, an American fighter who also has a reputation for hard hits and really going at it in the ring. When these two faced off, the crowd was giddy with excitement, knowing that there would be some major blows going on. Page's team was down by quite a few points and when Page started fighting, it appeared that the overall team score was not necessarily the primary thing on his mind - hitting really hard was higher. The two had to be separated a few times by the center ref and they put on quite a show. In the end, Page did win the battle by a score of 2-1 but Team USA won the overall war with a final score of 26-15.
The Ocean States promoters, after seeing who won the day time divisions, decided to hold the run offs for the men's creative/musical/extreme weapons on stage rather than during the day time. Following that competition, the winner would face Caitlin Dechelle, Jennifer Espina and Ross Levine to determine the overall adult weapons grand champion. Facing off for the creative/musical/extreme grands were the four weapons horsemen of Team Paul Mitchell: Rudy Reynon, Matt Emig, Marc Canonizado and Kalman Csoka. When the four took the stage, everyone paid attention.
Canonizado performed with his sword and his tricks looked effortless as always. Matt Emig and his nunchuck routine was going strong and then he dropped one of his chucks and bowed out. Reynon and his kamas flew across the ring with style and grace. However, it was like Csoka was in another dimension as he came out of the gate with his double sword routine. He was simply amazing with new sword tricks that had the crowd and the judges totally in awe. In the end, Csoka received five perfect 10s from the judges and won this grand championship. Csoka then went on to the overall grand championship competition and hypnotized the crowd again and received five more perfect tens and another title.
Despite adversity, intense stress and lots of set backs, the Ocean State Grand Nationals happened and conquered with some fantastic competition in all areas and a tournament that, despite an unexpected venue, ran efficiently and on time. The promoters thank everyone for their wonderful support this year and look forward to a great event in 2011!
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