This past Saturday, Colton competed in his karate school’s tournament. He competed in 3 categories: combination challenge, form challenge, and sparring. He was amazing in all three categories.

First, he did combination challenge. Going head-to-head with another student, they had to remember three moves drawn randomly by the judges. After completing the moves, the students would turn their backs to the judges, and the judges would vote. Colton won a gold medal.

Next up he had to perform a series of moves called a form. He spent the better part of 2 months memorizing the moves. He performed them to near perfection and won another gold medal. He was riding high, but it would soon catch up to him.

His last event was sparring. Not as intense as the Karate Kid movie, but pretty intense for 6-8-year-olds. He was given a bye in the first round and won the second round. The gold medal match was intense! His opponent was just a little bit quicker on each punch and kick. It seemed like every second his opponent would get a point. After falling in the hole 8 to 0, Colton’s emotions got the best of him and you could see the tears forming. The match ended and Colton fell apart. He was the saddest kid with a silver medal in all the tournament. His opponent was very nice and came up to him and told him he did a great job. I don’t know if Colton heard him through his sniffles. He started to calm down a little with Mrs. Woods (the master instructor at his school) came up to him and gave him some words of encouragement. He did have another melt down on the way out, but a short car ride and pizza at Dewey’s took care of it.

He worked so hard, and we couldn’t be any more proud of him.