Karate Kid

Earlier today, Lucas had his first competition at his martial arts studio. Since he's in Little Dragons for another month or two, the rules were fairly simple. Each of the kids had to do a few different exercises--jumping jacks, push-ups, and crunches--followed by three types of kicks--front, side, and roundhouse--and wrap it up by showing off their flexibility by doing the splits. Afterwards, three of the black belts judged their technique, and then all the kids got trophies, with the top 3 getting slightly larger ones.

Lucas did a decent job though we would have liked if he had been a little more vocal. He was supposed to count out the exercises, but he whispered them. He also didn't yell out "ki-yah!" at the end of each kick set like they were supposed to, instead sort of mumbling it. Despite that, he did end up tied for 3rd out of the 10 or 11 kids that competed. The tiebreaker, with a girl from his kindergarten class, involved getting into one of the stances they learn and not moving. As you can imagine, at age 5, getting a boy to stay still for more than a couple of seconds in a challenge. We were impressed that he lasted almost a minute, but in the end he moved, followed by him raising his hands and letting out a resounding "yes!" Kind of ironic now that I think about it, since that shout was louder than anything he did during his presentation. Whatever the case, he still ended up with a nice trophy.

Below, I've included a picture from before the competition as well as one afterwards as Lucas poses with his new trophy. Marilu recorded his entire performance on the camera, but I haven't uploaded that yet. Once I do, I'll be sure to get it on the blog. In the meantime, enjoy these pics!