TSA Taekwondo on tour in Europe

We recently took a team of 12 to the Dutch Open Taekwondo championships 2019. This competition is the toughest competition in our competitive calendar. We went last year and had a brilliant time, a large part of our enjoyment was the sport hotel we stayed in. This year, we stayed in the same hotel and it had been upgraded to include more facilities including a 12 a side table football game, a slide from the first floor to reception, a set of kickbags near reception and a football game with an electronic scoring system.

Team TSA: Will Foster, Grace Foster, James Khan, James Boyle, Charlie Goodman, Terri Goodman, Liam Wise, Aella Bateman, Kado Bateman, Joshua Duplock, Marcus Duplock, Amalia Radu.

Coaches: Gary Foster, Lita Foster, Steve Duplock

On arrival at the hotel, we checked in and assembled for the weigh-in. Everyone made their weight and managed to eat and relax in preparation for the competition the next day. Only those doing patterns had to arrive early at the competition. We had 3 competitors doing patterns but unfortunately we did not manage to win any of the rounds of patterns. At about 12pm, the rest of our competitors turned up and we had a team photo. It was obvious as soon as the sparring started that the competition was going to be tough. The other competitors were highly experienced and just winning a single fight would be difficult.

Kado and Liam were the only ones to win any fights during the whole competition with Charlie, James Khan and Aella coming very close to winning their first fights. We ended up with One silver medal (Kado) and a bronze medal (Terri).

After the competition, we had a relaxing evening in the hotel where we had a boys v girls game of table football score girls 3 boys 2. We played a bit of football, basketball, table tennis and went swimming.

The following day, some of the team headed off home to get to school and work for Monday. The rest of us headed into Amsterdam for the day where the weather was not great but we did a tour of the city's famous landmarks by river boat and walked around all the notorious areas before heading back to the hotel. Another great evening at the hotel followed. We set off home on the Monday, ready to return again next year for another great trip of TSA Taekwondo on tour.