Competing against Teammates

**Cowardly Lurker** · Posted On: 2/11/2008 11:13pm

I competed in my second tournament on Saturday and ended up with a silver medal. There were two other guys from my club in my division, and out of a 24 man bracket, we ended up in the top three spots (white belt 170 - 185 lbs). Our instructor's policy is that we don't compete against our teammates, so we ended up basically flipping for placement. I got silver (turns out, you never lead paper in rock/scissors/paper, but my 10 year old daughter didn't tell me that ahead of time).

I know some of the other schools don't have this practice. Some, like Gracie Barra, have multiple schools and so many students, I don't see how they COULD have this policy. What do you guys think? I don't really have a problem with it and it hasn't been a problem at my club that I'm aware of, but others I've talked to think it's bullshit. Is this a common practice or is my instructor uncommonly conservative?

As an aside, I've got my videos posted. My 12 year old son was my camera guy, so it's a little shaky. I'd appreciate any feedback, good or bad. I know I've got a lot to learn, particularly when it comes to working in someone's closed guard. In match 2, that guy locked me up and I couldn't break his guard open to save my life.

I'm the balding dude who looks tired.

match 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeSGILo0OzI
match 2
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...16901&hl=en-GB
match 3
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...450&pr=goog-sl

**Bayou** · Posted On: 2/11/2008 11:19pm

I think that's silly. In the schools where I've trained, they've requested that the brackets be made to separate all the teammates until the semis or finals, but once there, you just compete against each other. And why not? You do it every day in practice. We've had teammates and friends compete against each other and there are never any hard feelings.

That's lame that he made you "flip" for medals. You paid your money and deserved to compete for gold.

**Cowardly Lurker** · Posted On: 2/11/2008 11:23pm

I should mention that if I wanted to roll for the gold at the school, I could. We were set up far enough apart in the brackets that we each had 3 matches before we ended up looking at facing each other.

**Kokujin** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 1:31am

That type of stuff happens in our competitions sometimes....but if the two guys are from two different but affiliated schools they still fight for their place in the podium! But some times it's the old flip of the coin between instructors!

**Sindri** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 7:19am

Back when I used to compete a bit in Taekwondo in Iceland this would happen all the time. My club was the biggest club and some divisions would only have competitors from the one club.

We always fought it out!

It's actually quite fun warming up with your usual partner before the fight then going to separate sides of the mat to do the fight.

**Jadonblade** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 7:29am

In judo I had to fight a team mate almost every comp I did, if I beat him I got gold if not I got silver. Always the same guy as well. He was such a dick.

**CannibalCrowley** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 7:31am

He forced you guys to flip instead of letting you compete? That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve heard. Unless he paid the travel and entrance fees, I would have told him to go **** himself.

**Cowardly Lurker** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 8:17am

Originally Posted by CannibalCrowley

He forced you guys to flip instead of letting you compete? That’s one of the dumbest things I’ve heard. Unless he paid the travel and entrance fees, I would have told him to go **** himself.

I wouldn't go so far as to say, he forced us. It's not like he pulled the rule out of his ass and made any of us look foolish. It's a known policy. I understand your point, though.

I guess my opinion is that, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor idiosyncracy at worst and a non-issue at best. I was surprised on MAP when I mentioned this and KempoFist called bullshit on it. Since there are a lot more grapplers over here, I thought I'd run it by you guys to find out how common this is. Point being, if there were more significant problems I had with the school, this might be the final straw. But as it is, I like the school, think it's a great place to train and so this isn't a big deal to me.

Also, I'm not sure about larger tournaments. We have several guys travelling down to the Pan Ams next month, two in the same bracket. In the unlikely event that both end up in the finals, I expect they'd probably roll for it. I don't know, but I have a hard time imagining them flipping a coin at an international event.

**Jadonblade** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 8:41am

I would think the pan ams people would be really pissed having their medals flipped for.

**Ming Loyalist** · Posted On: 2/12/2008 8:43am

to me, this policy makes more sense in full contact striking tournaments, than in grappling tournaments.

the reasoning is that when you go into a full contact fight with striking, there is a large chance of getting injured in some way (almost a 100% chance in fact.) in a tournament where you have several fights, this becomes even more likely. so by skipping a fight against a teammate, you also skip a potential nasty injury.

when we have done this in the past we haven't flipped a coin, as we are usually pretty sure who would have won, based on sparring at the school. the less skilled fighter will usually bow out to the more skilled fighter.

this hasn't been a major issue in the past, and we haven't had a situation where the fighters were evenly matched (in that case we would have flipped a coin or let them fight it out.)