TAEK-ING YOUR BREATH AWAY

Kukkiwon Malaysia Taekwondo Competition

Hello again! It's Dhanya here with another post! Today, I'm going to be sharing an interesting fact about myself with everyone. I just so happen to be a Poom 2 in Taekwondo (big surprise there!) For anyone who doesn’t know, Taekwondo is a form of Korean Martial Arts and Poom 2 is the 2^nd level for red/black belt holders. I’ve been learning Taekwondo since I was 7 years old actually and I pretty much owe it to my grandma for enrolling me. 

Anyways, I decided to fill you guys in about a Taekwondo competition I went for recently! It was held on the 6^th and 7^th of June this year. I took part in a few events on both days, the first event being the ‘Jumping-Front Kick’ event on Saturday. The good news is I made it to the finals! The bad news is my height and strength failed me as I was not able to jump high enough to break the second plank at the height of 195cm. I was pretty disappointed but did not want that simple let down to affect the rest of the competition. Thankfully, the rest of the day was for participants in the primary school category.

My teammates and I practicing during lunch break.

The next day, I had three more events to compete in. The first event was ‘Individual Poomsae’. I was completely shocked when they announced that the age group I was competing in was 13 to 18 as there were A LOT of talented people there. I surprised myself by getting into the finals and gave it my all; however, I couldn’t make it into the Top 3 but I managed to achieve 5^th place and will work my way up from there.

My teammates for the team poomsae event,

The second event for the day was ‘Team Poomsae’. I was teamed up with my fellow teammates Hasif and Mercy and we had been practicing together for about a month. One of the main judging criteria was that we had to be synchronized and it took us some time to get the hang of it. We finished off two patterns with a score of 5.7; however, this happened to be the exact same result as yet another team. We were given second place overall as the other team had better marks from the performance aspect. We were disappointed but surprised that our efforts proved to be worth it.

Team Poomsae event during the Team Competition.

My last event for the day was the ‘Team Competition’ and we were all exhausted by that point. Not to mention, one of our members wasn’t feeling well. This event involved a team of 7 or more people and we were judged based on a Team Poomsae, Self Defense, Jumping Kick, Four-Direction Breaking, Spinning Kick and Power Breaking. We had been practicing for a while now and this had been our third competition performing as a team. We gave it our all and managed to achieve 1^st place in the 13 – 16 age group.

That was the perfect ending to an excruciatingly tiring two days. In all honesty, I love the fact that I have a team who support me wholeheartedly and make me feel as though I’m a part of their ‘family’ even though I’ve only been with them for only about a year now. I believe that everyone should be part of a team (any sort of team really) and it’s fun too! Alright, more to come soon! Adios, Wonderers!