...Where Dreams Begin^®  

 Our final day of competition was another awesome one with 5 Gold medals, 2 Silver medals and 4 Bronze medals added to the Team Chambliss record. Joshua Shaw started off the day with his 24.0 Gold medal finish in forms, followed by Kamille Carbon's Gold medal win.  Joey Kula, Julian Rachman and Kyle Tanimura were all in the same forms division of 16 competitors, with Kyle having the unfortunate luck of coming up first in his division.  Then Julian's score was accidentally credited to the other boy he was competing against, until Master Chambliss ran down to the ring and got the judges to realize their mistake.  Unfortunately, that meant they turned off the scoreboard so we had to wait in suspense to see how our three competitors would end up.  Kyle was able to hold on to his bronze medal with his score of 22.5 and Julian was awarded the Silver, even though his 22.6 score put him in a tie for first, because they add back the two scores originally dropped, and that put him 1/10th behind first place.  Zachary, Eduardo and Corey were also competing against each other in a division of eight.  Their scores were very close, with Corey's 22.0 placing him 5th overall, Eduardo's 22.1 placing him in 4th place, and Zachary's 22.5 winning him the Silver medal. Wow!  All this action happened in just the first 30 minutes of the morning!

We did equally well in sparring today, with 4 of our competitors competing in World Class sparring and the eight others in Elite Open sparring.  Alex Nahabedian got it started with his Gold medal win in World Class sparring, winning his final match 3-0.  Gab Kula and Sarina Pacifici each brought home a Bronze in World Class sparring.  Kyle Tanimura became a National Champion Gold medalist when his 12-7 win ended the match early. Kamille also didn't waste any time winning her Gold medal in Elite Open sparring.  She won her first match 8-1 in the first 21 seconds of the first round, followed by a 7-0 win in the first 51 seconds of the first round of her second match and then wrapped up the Gold with her 9-2 win of her final match.  Nicolle Carbon was our final competitor, and although she didn't medal, everyone who stayed to cheer her on thought she did a great job in her first Junior Olympics ever, let alone, her first Junior Olympics as a Black Belt.  Thanks to all of you who stayed with us until the very end to cheer on Nicolle.  That's what I call team spirit.

Congratulations to Team Chambliss.  We're proud of each and everyone of you.  With a total of 36 medals won at the 2007 Junior Olympics, (19 Gold, 8 Silver, 9 Bronze) we can only imagine what you will do next year at the 2008 Junior Olympics in Detroit, Michigan.

Click here for all of today's photos.