We Have a Black Belt!

Evan earned his brown-black belt two years ago last week. He intended to test on the Mountain in 2020 and 2021, but the pandemic cancelled those events. This weekend, he finally had an opportunity to test, and he did so well.

They camped Saturday night in the literal freezing cold. Sunday morning, they were awoken at 6:30 to tear down camp. They trained all morning and into the afternoon, and then Issa and I were able to go to the campgrounds to see him test with his black belt class.

He and Brad have been working for months on his demo, and then he had a randori that was completely spontaneous. I know I'm biased, but he was amazing. His attackers were all adults, and he didn't flinch. At one point, I thought he had really put Brad down. He was fluid and strong and even smiled while he was doing it, and then I cried when I watched his teachers tie on his first black belt:

It has the white stripe to show that he earned it as a youth.

His teachers also graciously indulged my every belt picture tradition, and Bryan even recreated their first photo:

He signed the official black belt log. Each class carries it throughout their testing weekend and signs it at the end:

Six of these folks tested; the rest are the demo partners and teachers that he trained with throughout the weekend:

I'm so insanely proud of this boy.