8/4/12

Purple

After Adam mistakingly thought I was a purple belt, I was contemplating when that dreaded day does come, and I realized that I will probably no longer be able to compete in Jiu-Jitsu.  I can only afford to do local tournaments, and there are almost no other blue belt women competing in Nebraska right now, let alone higher ranks.

The only competing purple belt woman that I am aware of is my teammate Sara, and she already knows she can beat me any day of the week, so I don't think she's interested in competing with me anymore.  Our women's Jiu-Jitsu teacher Amy is also a purple belt, but she doesn't compete.  Even if she did, I would not sign up for that!  I already know how it would go: Amy throws Gina and submits her in .05 seconds!  It's a new world record for complete and utter domination!

So yeah, my purple belt competition options appear limited, unless I'm allowed to fight men (which I'm not opposed to, it's what I do 99% of the time in class).  At one of our tournaments there were no other woman signed up, so I asked Amy if there were any smaller guys I could go against.  She said "Well, there's a 14 year-old boy, but he weighs more than you."  I do not want to fight boys!  I'm aware that fighting dudes would put me at a disadvantage, but I'm not as vested in winning as I am in learning.  However, I have been advised that it might not be safe for me, because the male ego is sometimes more willing to hurt a woman than to lose to her.  I even have to deal with that kind of problem during open mat, so I know it would be much worse in competition. At that tournament when there were no women to fight, I ended up doing a match with Martìnez, and he's my dojobro, so he beat me kindly.

I'm just speculating, who knows what will happen in the future.  Hopefully I won't be promoted to purple belt for a couple more years, and by then there will be lots of purples competing!  Perhaps I won't even be interested in competing anymore by then.  Maybe I will just pay the USJF fee and start competing in Judo instead.  I might even quit martial arts entirely, you just never know.