Last weekend we were in Tallahassee, Florida, for our first ever TaeKwonDo tournament. I am not one for traveling sports because 1) it costs a lot of money, 2) it takes away from our time, and 3) it isn’t always family friendly. When Bubba had the opportunity to compete last year, we couldn’t. He had other prior commitments and he couldn’t bail on them because they weren’t as “fun”. The trip to Tallahassee popped up and we registered immediately. I will be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about martial arts. There are too many names to weapons, moves, belts, forms, this, and that. However, I do know he went in nervous and came out with renewed self confidence.
He was registered to compete in the novice division for Form, Weapons Form, Sparring, and Sparring with a Combat Weapon.
Novice division? In TKD tournaments you have two types of divisions – Novice and Competitive. Novice is for those who are new to competing or have only competed a couple times at tournaments. Competitive is for everyone who has been to a few. We’ve decided he will only do one more Novice before moving on to Competitive. Also, Competitive gets points. Those points are added up and will determine if you can be invited to Nationals and World. Novice receives no points but experience. I am ready for the points.
Other than the points, they are separated the same way – by age. No one will compete against someone who isn’t comparable in body size.
Bubba did really well for his first tournament. He was nervous at first but then found his groove. I noticed he constantly looked to us for approval after each round. I don’t know about other sports, but we will be doing more TKD tournaments in the future.
Scores:
Form : 9.7/9.8/9.8
Weapons Sparring : 9.8/9.8/9.8
Sparring : 3 – 2 W then 5 – 0 W
Sparring with Combat Weapon : 10 – 0 W
He took home 1st Place in all 4 categories.
Grand Master Lee was proud too!
