It’s past 1:00 in the morning here in Baltimore and we are just wrapping up a fantastic first day of the tournament! I hope you’ve been following us on all of our social media sites throughout the day. We’ve been doing our best to keep everyone up to date as well as possible (a special thanks to Ms. Liu and Mrs. Fitzsimmons for helping me out with that task).

Here’s a quick summary of the day (I promise to get into much more detail in a post after the tournament when it’s not so late at night). This year marked not only the tournament’s commemorative 25th year anniversary, but also Grand-master Huang’s 40th year teaching in the United States. So the opening ceremonies was particularly special this year with demonstrations and presentations honoring those accomplishments. After a spectacular opening ceremonies, competition was off and running! Throughout the whole day you could look around the ballroom and see someone from East West going all out in the forms and weapons. We brought home tons of medals today but more importantly demonstrated great skill and improvement!

The lei tai divisions started in the early afternoon. Even though our lei tai team was smaller than normal, there was nothing small about them when it came to there spirit and determination! Mr. Stamm did a fantastic job and took 3rd place in a very tough division. Ms. Baker and Ms. Berch both took 1st place in large divisions with very impressive showings. And Ms. Poon, our rookie on the team, did an incredible job and took silver in her first ever lei tai match. The team celebrated their hard work with our traditional evening of pizza and ice-cream in the hotel lobby following the matches!

Tomorrow competition starts first thing with our advanced Kenpo events and advanced 2 man set divisions! We’re all looking forward to another fantastic day at the tournament! We’ll continue to keep you posted throughout the day through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you everyone for your support and good chi!