Saturday: karate judging

People have been trying to get me to compete in a karate competition for years.  I've thought about it a few times, but for the one thing I want to do the price tag is too high.  This year though, I went to judge.  I thought it was going to be an all day thing, but it ended up only being two hours and that was perfect.  I'm happy to spend two hours volunteering, but when it is closer to five it starts to actually become a commitment.

Anyway, I starting by judging the 3&4 year olds.  They were super cute.  I was judging with two older guys, and it was also cute to see them watch the cute kids.

Then I was put in a ring for slightly older kids.  The judges I was paired with knew what they were doing.  It was a little intimidating when I came up with a different score than they did, but Will just said that it's good and that it's ok to look at different things.  We did often have the same scores, so that was good.

The scoring was a bit weird.  The participants were ranked and then the best person was given a score of 9.9, the second best 9.8, etc.  It was standard and everyone knew what was going on, but it still seemed a bit weird.  Also, there tended to be 2-4 participants per round and every round got medals.  We were handing out medals left and right!

So, a few odd things but overall a good experience.