Tae Kwon Do Tournament

We've been doing tae kwon do for nearly a year now. We started because of the kids. But it's definitely grown on Brian and me and it's something I really enjoy doing. Twice a year our school hosts a tournament. We missed it last spring, so decided to go all day long and just compete in everything. (Except for C -- he only participated in two events). Brian, H and I started out with family forms, where we came in 3rd out of 3. Someone (I'm not naming names, but it wasn't me or H) messed up, but overall, we did ok. After a demo from the instructors and the demo team, it was time for us to go on. Here was the results breakdown from the day:

H - forms 2nd (out of 3), breaking 1st (out of 3), sparring 1st (out of 3)
C - breaking 1st (out of 3), sparring 2nd (out of 3)
Brian - forms 1st (out of 4), breaking 3rd (out of 4), sparring 2nd (out of 4)
Me - forms 3rd (out of 3), breaking 3rd (out of 6), sparring 1st (out of 3)

The boys did great. They were strong and confident and it showed. C ended up sparring for 2nd place against his friend (in the photo above) who came in 1st. H ended up getting a bye and then sparring against one of his friends too, who unfortunately gave him a bloody nose which automatically disqualifies them. But they had so much fun, and did really awesome.

I had been having dreams about forms for a week. I had to do two different forms -- one for family, one for individual. It had been messing me up a bit and drove me nuts. I thought I'd love doing forms, but in the end, I bombed. I was doing so well too! One of my moves brought me right up to the judges and the minute I got there, I went blank and forgot what I was supposed to do next. I was so ticked, that I probably had the loudest kiap (ending yell) I've ever had in my life at the end. But honestly, I wasn't expecting much out of board breaking or sparring so really wasn't thinking about it much. Guess what -- those are the events I did best on. Besides missing a kiap at the end of my step-over front snap kick, I nailed it. Broke both my boards first try. (My other kick was a reverse ax kick...). I was actually super proud of that third place win, because it was out of six and against some pretty amazing competition. And sparring.... Right before I went on, a friend of mine tore her Achilles during a fight. It kind of shook us all up, because frankly, while you have to spar at least once in tournament to get your black belt, my over 40 age group just is not interested in getting injured, which is extremely easy to do. It's why I did it now -- to get it over with. I ended up being grouped according to height, and at 5'9" we were all about even height. Height tends to help in my favor normally, but not this time. I was paired with a very fair, very decent group as it turns out, which actually made the experience quite fun. This sounds really dumb, but I really had no idea the entire time who was winning the match. They call points, but I wasn't really paying attention. I just did my thing, and ended up winning it. It was a pretty great feeling. Such a fun day.