Competition Report: Taekwondo

This Thursday, 28th May 2009, the Hwachong Taekwondo Club’s A Division Poomsae teams headed down to Regent Secondary School to make their mark in the National Inter-School Taekwondo Championships 2009, which saw avid participation from schools such as Serangoon JC, Jurong JC, traditional powerhouses Temasek JC and Victoria JC among many others.

 The format of the tournament is such that the Individual Preliminary Rounds, Semi-finals, Finals, and Group Finals are all held on the same day. Poomsae, meaning patterns, was what the competition was all about. Execution, sharpness, presentation, confidence, aura, and accuracy were the qualities that the judges looked out for. Each belt category has a specific pattern of moves to master and display.

The preliminary rounds was just a taste of what our participants had to offer. Our team gave nothing less than their best, and a large portion made it through to the semifinals, though a few of us were naturally outclassed by their opponents.

The competition lasted through the morning and afternoon; and as our members competed to break into the finals with verve and determination, there was never a lack of support from their clubmates, who expressed their encouragement in their applause and cheers which thundered across the hall.

In a flash, the finals were underway, and each of us knew our teammates had only one shot at the medals. We had faith, gathered our strengths, and swept the stages, or in this case, the mats, with flair.

When the finals were over, the team was overwhelmed with delight when the tremendous results, which included 3 individual golds and, 1 silver and 1 bronze, among many other top 9 positions. With this, our the resolve to clinch even more top places in the group events was boosted by this immense lift in morale.

The teams executed their patterns with vigour, zest and precision, which pressured the other schools to up their performance. Each round of performance was met with nail-biting moments at the end as the crowd waited for the score (out of 10), to be flashed on the LCD screens.

 Serangoon JC

Here’s a video of our team in action!!!

Ultimately, the club, outshone favourites TJC and VJC, and emerged as CHAMPIONS in the group patterns category, 1ST RUNNERS-UP in the Female Individual Events, and 2ND RUNNERS-UP in the Male Individual Events, with the added prestige of being crowned OVERALL CHAMPIONS!

As team events offer much more points than individual events, the impact we made in the team poomsae events have allowed us to leapfrog TJC in the overall rankings, beating them by a narrow margin of 2 points. This is an extremely commendable result for us as, unlike the other schools, we did not have any members participating in the black belt categories. This is indeed a betterment of last year’s 3rd placing.

Here are the top 9 results:

White Belt:
Female: 4th – Cheryl Lim Qian Yi
Male: 1st - Bertram Lim Yan Wei

Yellow Belt:
Female: 6th – Fu Xiao Chun,
                                     8th – Jasmine Teo Chiat Mein
Male: 6th – Lim Wei Jing,
                 9th  Basil Lee Wei Jie

Green Belt:
Female: 5th – Tam Shiyun Noelle Camelia
Male: 2nd – Jackie Tan Wei Song 
               4th - Sylvanus Quek Junwei

Blue Belt:
Female: 1st – Low Shinyi,
                                4th – Lim Li Wei Angela,
                 5th – Cher Yuqin
Male: 4th – Tseng Pei Wei

Red Belt:
Female: 1st – Zhou Wenjing,
                  3rd – Khor Pek Yee,
                4th – Lim Poh Ting
Male: 5th – Tseng Pei Wei,
    6th - Cai Yitian

We trained hard for weeks, and we achieved what we deserved. The club wishes to thank everyone for their support, and we will train even harder for next year’s nationals. Conincidentally, starting with next year, 2010, Taekwondo will be recognized as an official sport in the National Inter-school Calendar durig the competitions season! Watch out for us!

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Tags: Taekwondo
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