Welsh Open Competition - On The Day (19th May 2013)

On the day of the Welsh open, all the people staying at the Cardiff North Premier Inn were treated to an early 6:30am alarm call in the shape of the fire alarm going off! This was initially put down to possible dirty tactics to make us all so tired our sparring competitors easily get hit and our patterns ones would fall asleep standing up. As it turns out it was really some person who had decided to have a fly ciggy in their room! We even found out the room number too... maybe we should all have got changed into our doboks and paid them a visit?? As it turned out, this didnt faze any of us!

As I mentioned in my previous post, this is my first entry into a TAGB competition. I've spectated at the 2012 Scottish Open and Closed but nothing really prepares you for when you are going to be competing for that first time. I'll freely admit to starting to shake and sweat as soon as I walked into the hall... and what a hall! IT WAS HUGE!! Took a few words of encouragement from Mr McMillan and Mr Chahal to calm me down a bit, I just kept thinking "What the hell am I doing??" I've since found out there were over 1000 people competing spread out over 22 areas, so yeah... a big comp! The screen system put in place was great and we were able to find out which areas we were going to be in well before being called. During the whole day everything worked very smoothly too, so a big thank you to the organisers.

Karen, Teagan and Ieuan were first into their areas while I was 2nd up in area 22. I sat with Ieuan and saw him do Do San along with what seemed like 100 peewee yellow belt boys. Very proud of him for entering his first competition. I'd also like to thank the lady official for her fabulous pep talk to the boys after this patterns competition had ended, her words have even encouraged me to work harded for next time :)

I then hopped over to the area Teagan was in just in time to get a few shots of her in her patterns competition.

And from my vantage point at Teagan's area, I was able to get a couple of shots of Karen doing her pattern (Gae Bek).

Just after this I heard the call for men's green belt patterns. No one managed to get any shots of me doing Won Hyo.. maybe a good thing this! There were perhaps about 8-10 green belts taking part, not 100% sure on this so maybe someone can clarify, I was starting to shake a bit more by this time. Two competitors going at a time with 3 officials judging each one. All I can remember is being called, being asked which tul (pattern) I was going to do and then.... SI JAK.... I was off... Nerves did get the better of me and I rushed it a bit but by the end I had a 9.6, 9.5, 9.5. Which I was pleased with, although not enough for a medal I though. After watching the last few green belt doing their patterns I was called over by one of the officials who asked "Which club are you with?"... "Ayr/Prestwick ma'am"... then I noticed she had written my name next to the 3rd place on her sheet! There was a tie for 1st so two other competitors went again and this decided the gold and silver medals. I got chatting to these guys afterwards and I hope to see them at the Scottish Open, and maybe catch up on Facebook.

After this I wandered back over, in a bit of a daze still, to see how everyone else was doing. Teagan had just finished her sparring... later on we found out she'd won a bronze. Fantastic stuff, another proud parent moment. The extra sparring sessions with Mr McMillan, and the continued encouragement from Mr Chahal, are certainly paying off. Thank you both!

After this we started looking in on other Phoenix teamates to see how they were doing. Karina Chahal had just formed a tag team with two young girls from south of the border... team name... "Rose and Thistle".. and they came back with a gold for black belt girls lightweight tag. Brilliant stuff girls, a great result.

Another Phoenix team mate, Connor Mugrew, was just about to start in the boy lightweight individual sparring so we all got round that area to watch him. Connor fought every round brilliantly. He moves so fast and his sidekick is so quick, this young man is definitely one to watch. Couple of injuries during this competition, one in which Conner managed to knock out his opponent. Kudos to the young man though as he got back up and finished the fight. And in his always good sportsman's like way, Connor went over to make sure he was OK after the fight had ended. In the last round Connor excelled and with some more quick fired side kicks and even quicker hands, he got the gold. This wasn't his last medal though... two of the young men he had competed against in the individual also became his tagteam mates and they got gold in that. Great result! Bryan is going to have to buy a bigger trophy cabinet soon me thinks :)

One other medal winner on the day was young Mikey McDowall who got a bronze medal in the peewee tagteam. I tried to catch up with Darrin and Mikey but events we were all in seemed to clash quite a bit... well done Mikey :)

Throughout the day, we'd bumped into loads of other Phoenix team mates who were bubbling with excitement over medal wins. Well done all and I'll get the results from your instructors so they can go on here. I know some of these have gone up on Facebook already, but once the winners photos in the club are done they can also go on blog for the world to see!

At about 1:30pm or so (just as black belt destruction was starting... damn! I wanted to see that too!) we left sunny Cardiff Uni. They day had left me with a total adrenaline high which I still had into the following day. Certainly winning a medal helped with that but mostly it was the atmosphere in the arena, everyone I spoke to (most people I had never met before) was so full of enthusiasm. People would walk past, see a medal winner, smile and nod to them in a silent "well done". One official stopped me on the way out to congratulate me, I've never met him but think I've seen him on the TAGB Facebook page, thank you for you kinds words sir. Even though we were all competing against each other it felt like one big team, or more a family, full of encouragement for everyone else. Its very hard to describe that feeling if you've never competed, I think the only way I can is of belonging to something very very special.

The burning question for me is... will I compete again?? Oh hell yeah! Won't make the World Championships but I'm already planning to be at the Scottish Open on September 7th. Will it matter if I don't win? No I don't think it will. Winning is great don't get me wrong, but that feeling I described above, being part of something, is a huge rush and I'd encourage anyone to give it a go just for that feeling... and on that note I'll part from this post with a final photo of some of my Phoenix Ayr/Prestwick "Family" (and 3 are my real famly!) something I am very proud to be a part of!