[Aikido] Great Tournament!

[Sean Flynn]

Dear Everybody,

   I would like to congratulate and express my thanks to Charlie, Geoff, 
Louise, Yusuke, Katy, and everybody who contributed so much time and effort 
towards this year's Vassar Aikido Tournament.  It was a great success, and 
we had people coming from as far afield as Brazil to attend.

   The quality of the aikido was also very good and many new friendships 
were made and, for me, many old friendships were renewed.  All that was 
thanks to your exemplary efforts.  Great  job!

   I would also like to tell you that I would like to redouble my efforts 
as your instructor.  Last year, I was of course away for the spring 
semester, and during the fall I was hugely distracted by the writing of 
Economics for Dummies.  And this fall, I have had to miss practice some 
weekends to go to weddings, etc.  But for the rest of this semester and all 
of the spring, I will do my utmost to attend every practice.  For, you see, 
I have some big plans.

   First of all, I want to teach the entire Koryu Dai San Kata to all of 
the higher belts.  This is the black belt kata that contains about 50 
techniques that cover not only unarmed fighting but also sword and staff 
fighting.  Many of you are now quite advanced and it is time you learned 
these techniques.  At the same time, we now have the knowledge base in the 
club to really teach the lower ranks very quickly since several people 
besides me now know the below black belt curriculum extremely well.  This 
means that the club in fact has many qualified instructors.  And that means 
that we are at a point where everyone can now advance very quickly.

   In addition, it will also be a very fun time because Sensei Moe Stevens 
is just finishing up his barn dojo in Ohio, so that in the spring we can go 
there for a very inexpensive tournament.  We won't be going to the very 
expensive Arnold's...instead we can go to Moe's where we can sleep on the 
dojo floor for free and spend the weekend doing lots of aikido.  It will be 
grand.  So plan on that trip for the first weekend of Spring Break.

   And then next year at this time we are going to host the 2006 US 
National Tomiki Aikido Championships.  That's right, last year's tournament 
and this year's tournament were just warm ups.  Next year we get to host 
the Nationals and you'll have probably 200 or so of the best aikido players 
in the country to play with.  In addition, we will most likely get a nice 
contingent from Europe.

   So, going forward, we are going to be able to do lots of high level 
aikido and greatly improve together.  It will be fun and I hope that you, 
too, will redouble your efforts.  The rewards for doing so will be bountiful.

Yours,

Sean



Yours truly,

Sean Flynn
Assistant Professor of Economics
Vassar College
124 Raymond Ave #424
Poughkeepsie NY 12604-0424
USA

Telephone:      845-437-5209
FAX:            845-437-7576
E-mail: flynn at vassar.edu

My Academic Website is http://irving.vassar.edu/faculty/sf/sf.htm
My Aikido Website is http://vsa.vassar.edu/~aikido/