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Naginata competitions

Naginata competitions run on the same tools as kendo (pools, brackets, Swiss, and the scoring console), with naginata-specific rules the app handles for you. Naginata has two competition forms:

  • Combat (shiai): armoured matches scored by ippon, with one extra target, Sune (a strike to the shin), and a single 3rd place decided by a playoff instead of kendo's two joint 3rds.
  • Engi-kyogi: the kata form, in which a pair perform choreographed forms scored by referee flags rather than ippon.

You pick the form with two checkboxes on a competition's Settings tab, both locked once the draw is generated:

Checkbox What it does Available for
Naginata competition Turns on the combat rules: the Sune ippon and the 3rd-place playoff Individual and team
Engi (kata competition) Selects the Engi-kyogi kata form: flag-count scoring Individual only

Because Engi-kyogi is itself a naginata competition, a kata division usually has both on: Engi for the flag scoring and Naginata competition for the single 3rd place.

Sune ippon

Turn on Naginata competition and the score editor's waza buttons gain an S (Sune) alongside the kendo set, so the row reads M K D T S H. Award it the same way as any other waza:

  • On screen: tap S under the side that scored.
  • By keyboard: lowercase s awards Sune to Shiro (white, left), and Shift+S awards it to Aka (red, right). This mirrors the other waza keys, where a lowercase letter scores for Shiro and holding Shift scores for Aka.

Everything else about a naginata shiai bout (time, hikiwake, kiken, encho) works exactly as it does for kendo.

Third-place playoff

Kendo awards two equal 3rd places to the beaten semi-finalists and plays no bronze match. Naginata instead plays a 3rd-place playoff between the two semi-final losers, and only the top three positions receive medals.

Once both semi-finals are complete, the app adds the playoff to the knockout bracket, labelled 3rd Place. By convention it runs on the same shiaijo as the final and immediately before it, so it also appears in that court's queue. Score it like any other bout:

  • The winner of the playoff takes 3rd place.
  • The loser finishes 4th and does not appear on the awards podium.

The public podium reflects this automatically: a naginata competition shows a single 3rd place. Refer to Awards and winners for the full podium behaviour.

Engi-kyogi (kata competition)

Engi-kyogi is the kata form of naginata competition: a pair of competitors perform a set of choreographed forms, judged by a panel of referees who each raise a flag for the side they judge superior. It is scored entirely differently from a combat (shiai) bout: there are no ippon, no time on the clock, and no draws.

Turn on Engi (kata competition) on an individual competition's Settings tab to switch its score editor to flag counting. Combine it with Naginata competition so the kata division also gets the single 3rd-place playoff.

Quick-score and overrides are off for Engi

Because every Engi result comes from the flag editor, the kendo shortcuts, quick-score, manual winner overrides, and daihyosen are disabled for Engi competitions.

Add Engi pairs

An Engi competitor is a pair: two people from the same dojo or team, scored together as one unit. There are no individual bouts inside a pair. Enter each pair as a single participant row with both member names combined in the name field, joined by a dash, and the shared dojo:

Name 1 - Name 2, Dojo

When the competition uses zekken names, the zekken column holds the pair's combined zekken the same way:

Name 1 - Name 2, ZEKKEN1 - ZEKKEN2, Dojo

The two names display stacked on one side of the match, and the pair counts as one entry in the draw and one line in the standings.

Score with flags

The score editor becomes a flag counter with one column per side, Aka (red) and Shiro (white):

  • Use the + / - buttons under each side, or the keyboard: a adds a flag to Aka, s adds a flag to Shiro (either key works with or without Shift), Backspace undoes the last flag you added, and Enter saves.
  • A bout's flags must total 1, 3, or 5. The panel is always an odd size, so there is always a majority and a bout can never end in a draw. The editor flags any other total and will not let you save it.
  • The side with more flags wins the bout.

Standings

In Engi pools and leagues, pairs are ranked by the following criteria, in order:

  1. Total wins.
  2. Total flags accumulated across all bouts, as the tie-break when wins are equal.
  3. Name order (alphabetical by the pair's first listed member), when wins and accumulated flags are both equal.

Both the winning and the losing side's flags count toward that side's own tally, so a pair that loses by three flags to two still keeps its two flags.

Engi never holds a supplementary tie-break bout (no ippon-shobu, no daihyosen): a ranking that is still tied after wins and flags is settled by the name-order fallback above.

Excel exports

Both Excel downloads on the competition page (see Export and print) understand Engi:

  • Each pair is a single competitor throughout both workbooks. The data sheet lists the combined pair name under Player Name with the shared dojo, and every sheet that shows the pair (pool draw, match grids, standings, bracket pages, and the printable name sheets) shows both members together on one line as "Member 1 - Member 2".
  • Pool standings in both workbooks use the Engi columns: W (wins), Flags (total flags), and Rank. Losses are not recorded because ranking is determined by wins then accumulated own-side flags. The kendo points columns do not appear.
  • The results workbook records each side's referee flag count in the score cells instead of ippon letters, and a bout decided without flags (for example a kiken withdrawal) leaves the score cells blank with the decision marked in the centre column.