A new year trip to Holland

Every January there is a legendary competition in Taekwondo circles where all the best Taekwondo players in Europe attend for an unofficial European Championships. This year the Sittingbourne and Faversham Taekwondo club decided to see what it was all about. We took a team of 10 students to compete in the tournament this year. We set off on Saturday morning, each team member making their own way there with their families. We made it in time for the weigh-in and everyone made the weight and height check. We had an early night on the Saturday night and arrived nice and early for the competition the next day. There were 3 students competing in the Patterns division. Unfortunately they all lost in the first round. All 10 students were involved in the sparring competition. The children competed first with the adults competing later on in the day. The standard of competition was very high, with over 15 different countries represented. We had some mixed success, with a bronze for Grace Foster in sparring, a silver for Kado Bateman in sparring. Other noteable performances were Charlie Goodman who reached the second round, winning his first fight, Marcus Duplock also reaching the second round of his category. All the other students were eliminated in the first round of sparring.

After such a tough competition we now have a year to up our game for next year. Everyone learned loads and was inspired by some fantastic competitors. We hope to go back again next year and try again. The aim of the trip was to have fun and we all had that in spades. We stayed in a fantastic hotel about 3 miles away from the competition. The hotel had a mini sports centre with a swimming pool, sports hall, bowling alley, sauna, jacuzzi, and we enjoyed our stay enormously.