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A couple of months ago we were posting on a fitness thread started by Jester, and I mentioned the Tae Kwon Do tournament I was preparing for (Yong In International Presidential Cup).
The tournament was two weeks ago. I thought I'd post a recap of how things went
Good news is: I won 1st place at board breaking, and 2nd place in forms for my division.
Bad news: I forgot my video camera and didn't get any video :sob: I'm hoping to get some from other sources.
The tournament was just awesome. I really enjoyed every minute of it, good thing too as we were there literally all day.
I volunteered to help out as my school was sponsoring the tournament. We got together Friday to put the rings together and get everything set up. I did that at the Coliseum for the first several hours, then went over to the Sheraton to help out with registration.
Boy there were a lot of people there! There were nearly 1100 contestants and their families. Over 300 came from my school (which has 5 different locations in 2 states). We had contestants from Korea, all over the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Then we got our job assignments for Saturday. Originally they wanted to make me a ring runner, moving competitors from the holding area to the rings, and from the rings to the awards area. But they were short on scorekeepers, and since I'm comfortable with computers I volunteered for a job change.
The training on the software was very basic but interesting. We only used it for sparring; we used a form for board breaking and forms.
We had to be there at 0630 to get everything set up for the doors to open. We started events pretty close to on time at 8am, but they screwed things up with organizing the kids and it put the whole thing 2 hours behind. They also didn't account for the opening ceremonies (which took place right after the demo team competition), which put us another hour behind on things. Time management was the biggest problem we had. That, and we volunteers didn't really get enough training, so some people ended up very busy while others hardly did anything at all.
Score keeping ended up being a lot of fun. I was pretty focused on what was going on in my ring, as I had to pay very careful attention to the judges and keep up so we could keep things flowing. I had some problems; the calculator for tallying scores didn't work, so I was trying to do it on my cell phone which didn't help very much. One of the judges got a little frustrated because I can't do it in my head (I have a learning disability in math, but I didn't try and explain it). But I managed to keep up and actually the judges were pretty patient with my few mistakes.
I was kind of glad to do the score keeping as it gave me some insight as to how sparring works in competition.
As a volunteer, I was given a free lunch. It was a choice between pizza or authentic Korean food. I took the Korean food: steamed rice, bulgogi, a pulled pork disk, vegetable cakes, and kimchee. It was all very good.
Another plus was lunch was in the VIP box seating on the 2nd floor. It gave us a great view of the floor for lunch I watched some of the sparring from there because it made it easy to watch several matches at once, and also some of the demo team competition.
I had to watch our school (who went last) do demo team competition from the floor as we were getting ready for opening ceremonies at that time. But I did get to see all of it, and it was outstanding. All the schools were, but I freely admit I think our school outshone them all.
So did the judges: we won that competition.
After lunch we had opening ceremonies. We had rehearsed this in the morning. There was a procession and show by the Steel and Gold Drum Line from North Carolina's A&T University. It was an awesome show, and the crowd loved it. Then, with the drumming still in place, a procession of flags led by the Yong In University flags, Korean and American Flags, then the state flags of every US state, and placards for each country represented at the tournament. I carried Arizona.
There were some speeches by the big wigs from Yong In, and the WTF.
Then the Yong in team did their demo. It was wonderful. One guy did serial spinning back kicks to break boards: 10 in a row. He was perfect and never missed a shot. Wow!
After that, I went back to my ring to score the 2nd wave of events (the youngest kids were 1st wave, the older kids 2nd wave, and adults 3rd wave). We were 3 hours behind at this point and never really got caught up.
About the time the 2nd wave began board breaking, I asked to be relieved so I could change into my dobuk and warm up for my own events. I was very anxious about being well warmed up and having time to practice before my events. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed as scorekeeper longer than I did. I ended up waiting around several hours with little to do. Once I'd warmed up and practiced I realized I was as ready as I was going to get. I was very anxious to get going.
Two other girls from my school who are my belt rank were also very anxious (one of them is my headmaster's wife). We pumped each other up, practiced, and tried to keep from a panic attack. We found a soda case box to practice our board breaking on, since we didn't have access to a hand target (I almost went to the dealer tables and bought one). I did go to the table where the Yong in team was and bought a signed t shirt from them. They were very nice, and two of them later judged me on my form.
Finally we got called to the holding area, and to our rings. I could have done so much better on my form. I got nervous and rushed through it. I know my front stances weren't as deep as they should be (I have to concentrate hard to do that because of my knees). But the Yong in judge was very nice to me as I left the ring and told me I did a good job, which made me feel better about it. I managed to remember to bow to her as I left.
My head master was one of the judges when I did board breaking. He was doing the holding, not the actual scoring. I did my jumping front snap kick, and I think I did a pretty credible job of it. I didn't have a chance to see him later to ask him what he thought; I'll have to ask him what I need to work on for the future in class next week. But I broke the board on the first try. It hurt! Man, my foot stung. It was a full thickness board, and my first time doing this technique for board breaking, and I was regretting my choice almost as soon as I kicked it. However, the sting went away very quickly, and when I woke up this morning there was no mark, no bruise, and zero pain. It's like I never kicked the board, but I know I did because I still have the pieces
Our school did rather well across the board for the events. I saw a lot of our students walking around with 1st and 2nd place medals (everyone got at least a 3rd place medal). There were some tears from the kids who didn't win their events, and parents consoling them. I can understand how they felt; I know I must have looked disappointed when I didn't win 1st at forms, and when the score for my board breaking got messed up. My head master put me and the other competitor in the wrong order in the ring, so the score keeper reversed our scores and hence our rankings. I had thought I did so much better than she did, and so did she frankly so we were both suprised when Master Woo announced me as 2nd . . . I know my jaw must have hit the floor. The score keeper realized it right away, and jumped up to tell the masters a mistake had been made and to fix it. Whew!
I later found out it was my yelling (kihap) that made the difference for me in my win on board breaking. I got extra points for it. That was one of the things Master Woo had really stressed with us, so I had practiced it a LOT. His wife took 1st place in board breaking for her division, and she looked pleased so I'm sure he was too
After my event, I went back to score keeping for the rest of the tournament. By that time they were doing adult sparring. The adult sparring was more complicated to score than the kids because there were more warnings, deductions, and extra points issued. But it was fun and I saw some good matches. I felt bad by the end though, it was getting late (it was nearly 11pm by this time) and my brain was turning to mush. I was losing focus and messing up the time and scores a bit (awarding warnings when it should have been extra points, or forgetting to hit the start button when a match started). The judges were nice about it though, and so were the competitors; everyone was getting tired.
Got out of there around 1130pm; 17 hours after I got started. What a long day! Went home, went to bed, and didn't get up until almost 11am the next morning.
Had a great time though! Looking forward to the next one
The tournament was two weeks ago. I thought I'd post a recap of how things went
Good news is: I won 1st place at board breaking, and 2nd place in forms for my division.
Bad news: I forgot my video camera and didn't get any video :sob: I'm hoping to get some from other sources.
The tournament was just awesome. I really enjoyed every minute of it, good thing too as we were there literally all day.
I volunteered to help out as my school was sponsoring the tournament. We got together Friday to put the rings together and get everything set up. I did that at the Coliseum for the first several hours, then went over to the Sheraton to help out with registration.
Boy there were a lot of people there! There were nearly 1100 contestants and their families. Over 300 came from my school (which has 5 different locations in 2 states). We had contestants from Korea, all over the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
Then we got our job assignments for Saturday. Originally they wanted to make me a ring runner, moving competitors from the holding area to the rings, and from the rings to the awards area. But they were short on scorekeepers, and since I'm comfortable with computers I volunteered for a job change.
The training on the software was very basic but interesting. We only used it for sparring; we used a form for board breaking and forms.
We had to be there at 0630 to get everything set up for the doors to open. We started events pretty close to on time at 8am, but they screwed things up with organizing the kids and it put the whole thing 2 hours behind. They also didn't account for the opening ceremonies (which took place right after the demo team competition), which put us another hour behind on things. Time management was the biggest problem we had. That, and we volunteers didn't really get enough training, so some people ended up very busy while others hardly did anything at all.
Score keeping ended up being a lot of fun. I was pretty focused on what was going on in my ring, as I had to pay very careful attention to the judges and keep up so we could keep things flowing. I had some problems; the calculator for tallying scores didn't work, so I was trying to do it on my cell phone which didn't help very much. One of the judges got a little frustrated because I can't do it in my head (I have a learning disability in math, but I didn't try and explain it). But I managed to keep up and actually the judges were pretty patient with my few mistakes.
I was kind of glad to do the score keeping as it gave me some insight as to how sparring works in competition.
As a volunteer, I was given a free lunch. It was a choice between pizza or authentic Korean food. I took the Korean food: steamed rice, bulgogi, a pulled pork disk, vegetable cakes, and kimchee. It was all very good.
Another plus was lunch was in the VIP box seating on the 2nd floor. It gave us a great view of the floor for lunch
I watched some of the sparring from there because it made it easy to watch several matches at once, and also some of the demo team competition.I had to watch our school (who went last) do demo team competition from the floor as we were getting ready for opening ceremonies at that time. But I did get to see all of it, and it was outstanding. All the schools were, but I freely admit I think our school outshone them all.
So did the judges: we won that competition.
After lunch we had opening ceremonies. We had rehearsed this in the morning. There was a procession and show by the Steel and Gold Drum Line from North Carolina's A&T University. It was an awesome show, and the crowd loved it. Then, with the drumming still in place, a procession of flags led by the Yong In University flags, Korean and American Flags, then the state flags of every US state, and placards for each country represented at the tournament. I carried Arizona.
There were some speeches by the big wigs from Yong In, and the WTF.
Then the Yong in team did their demo. It was wonderful. One guy did serial spinning back kicks to break boards: 10 in a row. He was perfect and never missed a shot. Wow!
After that, I went back to my ring to score the 2nd wave of events (the youngest kids were 1st wave, the older kids 2nd wave, and adults 3rd wave). We were 3 hours behind at this point and never really got caught up.
About the time the 2nd wave began board breaking, I asked to be relieved so I could change into my dobuk and warm up for my own events. I was very anxious about being well warmed up and having time to practice before my events. In retrospect, I wish I had stayed as scorekeeper longer than I did. I ended up waiting around several hours with little to do. Once I'd warmed up and practiced I realized I was as ready as I was going to get. I was very anxious to get going.
Two other girls from my school who are my belt rank were also very anxious (one of them is my headmaster's wife). We pumped each other up, practiced, and tried to keep from a panic attack. We found a soda case box to practice our board breaking on, since we didn't have access to a hand target (I almost went to the dealer tables and bought one). I did go to the table where the Yong in team was and bought a signed t shirt from them. They were very nice, and two of them later judged me on my form.
Finally we got called to the holding area, and to our rings. I could have done so much better on my form. I got nervous and rushed through it. I know my front stances weren't as deep as they should be (I have to concentrate hard to do that because of my knees). But the Yong in judge was very nice to me as I left the ring and told me I did a good job, which made me feel better about it. I managed to remember to bow to her as I left.
My head master was one of the judges when I did board breaking. He was doing the holding, not the actual scoring. I did my jumping front snap kick, and I think I did a pretty credible job of it. I didn't have a chance to see him later to ask him what he thought; I'll have to ask him what I need to work on for the future in class next week. But I broke the board on the first try. It hurt! Man, my foot stung. It was a full thickness board, and my first time doing this technique for board breaking, and I was regretting my choice almost as soon as I kicked it. However, the sting went away very quickly, and when I woke up this morning there was no mark, no bruise, and zero pain. It's like I never kicked the board, but I know I did because I still have the pieces
Our school did rather well across the board for the events. I saw a lot of our students walking around with 1st and 2nd place medals (everyone got at least a 3rd place medal). There were some tears from the kids who didn't win their events, and parents consoling them. I can understand how they felt; I know I must have looked disappointed when I didn't win 1st at forms, and when the score for my board breaking got messed up. My head master put me and the other competitor in the wrong order in the ring, so the score keeper reversed our scores and hence our rankings. I had thought I did so much better than she did, and so did she frankly so we were both suprised when Master Woo announced me as 2nd . . . I know my jaw must have hit the floor. The score keeper realized it right away, and jumped up to tell the masters a mistake had been made and to fix it. Whew!
I later found out it was my yelling (kihap) that made the difference for me in my win on board breaking. I got extra points for it. That was one of the things Master Woo had really stressed with us, so I had practiced it a LOT. His wife took 1st place in board breaking for her division, and she looked pleased so I'm sure he was too
After my event, I went back to score keeping for the rest of the tournament. By that time they were doing adult sparring. The adult sparring was more complicated to score than the kids because there were more warnings, deductions, and extra points issued. But it was fun and I saw some good matches. I felt bad by the end though, it was getting late (it was nearly 11pm by this time) and my brain was turning to mush. I was losing focus and messing up the time and scores a bit (awarding warnings when it should have been extra points, or forgetting to hit the start button when a match started). The judges were nice about it though, and so were the competitors; everyone was getting tired.
Got out of there around 1130pm; 17 hours after I got started. What a long day! Went home, went to bed, and didn't get up until almost 11am the next morning.
Had a great time though! Looking forward to the next one
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