Kent International Saturday 23rd June & Sunday 24th June 2007, Crystal Palace

Report by Alison

Saturday 23rd June

I know technically the 21st June was the longest day, but believe me Saturday 23rd June at Crystal Palace was the LONGEST day!

We all arrived at Crystal Palace at 8.30am to weigh in, I bought a programme so we could keep on top of things, as we had ten players fighting over seven mat areas, three coaches, so we needed to keep a breast of timings.

From the sheet we could tell that some players were going to have a tougher time than others, as some had half an hour allowed for their group and others had 3 hours! Weight groups varied from 2 players in one group to 20 in the biggest!

There was confusion over age bands, due to the new under 12 and over 12 rules. Then the under 10’s then had to fight under 12 rules!

All the players fought well, congratulations to Rebecca & Natasha Maslen who both fought in the under 63kg class and both won bronze medals.

All the other players’ won at least one fight each, most losing out for the bronze medal! In groups of bigger than 8 meant to get that far they had to have had 5 fights and have won 3 of them! Well done Sam Finn, Tom Jenkins, Myles Nelson, Dominic Nelson, Jack Dymond, Lucy Monks & Mollie Finn. All the over 12 groups had at least one England squad player! Some had other international squad players!

Sunday 24th June

On Sunday, they had got their acts together and it was actually running ahead! Natasha, Rebecca & Lucy entered the Youth section of the competition, which meant more International players and blue, brown & black belts! All the girls did their best, but it was a different game, with arm locks and strangles! Although they didn’t win their fights they did them selves proud and learnt a great deal!

Pat Dymond, our only Senior went on 2 hours early! I think I he was the only player in his group who wasn’t a black belt! Again this was a huge group! Pat did himself and the club proud! His first fight lasting 38 seconds and in his second fight he pushed out of the red whilst in a hold down, with 3 seconds to spare (younger players can learn from this!) Unfortunately he then got caught with the next throw, but that fight lasted longer, almost 1 minute, which believe me is a long time out there! Well done Pat!

After Pat had finished, all the players went for a relaxing swim, so now they can all say they have fought and swum at Crystal Palace!