Tae Kwon Do Tournament
Yesterday, my Tae Kwon Do school hosted the 2006 Champions Tae Kwon Do Open at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows, NY.
Since my school was hosting, I volunteered to help set up on the day of. So armed with a early-morning Starbuck’s Americano, I headed out to Queens on a traffic-less road.
In this picture, you can see the gymnasium at Francis Lewis High School. The mats are just about set up. I wish I had thought of taking a picture a few hours later when the gym was chock full of people.
After helping with the registration, I was volunteered to be a corner judge. A corner judge records points, negative points (Kam Jum), and warnings (Kyung Go) on a piece of scratch paper. There are usually 3–4 corner judges. The referee uses these sheets to make a final decision on the score based on consensus. This was the first time I had ever done this so I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Later, after scoring at least 30 matches, I started to get the hang of it.
Later, it was time for me to spar. I fought in three matches. The first one was against a young red belt but they stopped that match before the first period ended. My master wanted me to fight someone at least my own age. I thought I was doing well, but so it went.
My second match was against a bodan belt, which is basically the belt before black. He was big and muscular and mean-looking, but I beat him since he didn’t seem to have a lot of sparring experience. His attacks were fairly predictable. Like many students, this guy kept trying to throw a back-kick and I kept countering it by using a quick cut kick to the small of his back as he turned around. Doing this totally throws off their balance and they go down like a sack of potatoes.
My third match was against a red belt and my master told me to take it easy on him. Ok, I thought. This will be good experience for me to work on some of my textbook moves (as opposed to the panic moves I use when I’m overmatched).
Things were going well until I got an elbow on my neck when the red belt botched a back kick. It didn’t hurt since the blow glanced my jaw, but that didn’t stop the referee from giving him a Kyung Go (a warning) since head strikes were not allowed in this exhibition match.
When the match continued, the red belt and I got into close quarters again and again he botched a back kick. This time, he hit me so hard in the throat that I lurched backwards in pain. I took off my helmet and was like, “You have to be kidding me!” Could I breath? Could I speak?
The EMT guys, the ref, and my master all came over to see if I was ok. It hurt but I didn’t have any trouble breathing. In my last tournament, I got back-kicked in the face and my courage washed away at the thought of what had happened. Later, it turned out to be nothing but I had lost the match since my will to go on simply left me.
This time, I remembered that experience and when I was asked if I wanted to continue, I said hell yes. When we restarted the match I decided that I wasn’t going to take it easy anymore. I won the match easily, hit him good a few times (legally) and I was pretty satisfied to deny him any more points.
The guy was very apologetic. It was simply a bad habit since his arm basically swung around like that without his thinking. Since I was shorter, my neck was simply in-line with his wildly swinging limb.
In the end, I got two first-place trophies. Today, I can’t speak too well and it hurts to swallow. As I said before, I really need to lose some weight so I’ll get matched up with people my own height. I’m getting too old for this.
