A Short Treatise on Tae Kwon Do, Part 2

Ok, so you want to know what happened at last year's tournament then?

I brought the family with, and we arrived about 30 min. before the adults were supposed to kick off. The kids ran long (which I guess shouldn't have been surprising) so the adults started about an hour late.

There was only one other woman in my division in the forms competition. We were both newly minted blue stripes, and after a quick discussion, we came to the agreement that we would both do the new form. Well, I lost, but no big deal, it was a good try.

But then... we go up to the awards tables, and they say that I got first place, not the other woman. Well, neither of us was overly concerned, but they were nice enough to just give us both a gold medal.

So after this I'm feeling pretty cocky, and decide that my board break is going to be a spinning backfist (which I had done already at Health Kick, but not since). This was a big mistake. I had done *no* particular tournament training (they just didn't do it for the adults at least at Amherst), so I was playing things by ear. The other competitors did fair axe kicks, but I just had to be different, didn't I?

I lined up my break badly and came across the upper edge of the board solid on the middle of the back of my hand, splitting it open a bit (not bad), but the hand hurt terribly. I did break the board quite nicely with that badly botched attempt though, so I have that to console me. After the competition I went and got bandaged up and got an ice pack at the head judge's request. I wasn't going to - not showing weakness and crap like that - but it was good that I did, because there was still sparring to go.

At that point I didn't really suspect that the hand was broken - I came to the conclusion on my own several weeks later based on how much it still hurt and the funny give of a bone in my hand when I pressed gently on it. I never had it looked at officially, but considering that it was almost 3 months before it was fully recovered, and I can still feel an indentation in the bone there, and if I strike the back of my hand with even a moderate force the pain is extreme...well, I'm pretty confident in my layman's diagnosis.

But back to sparring. Now, I'm not much of a sparrer. I freely admit it. Come on, compared to most of the competitors, I'm fat, slow, and old. But I had attended some sparring classes for a while (alas no more, when Amherst changed it from Fri. to Thurs. that was it for me), and I thought it was fun, so why not?

Because of all the earlier delays, my court (the same one I had been on all evening btw) kicked off last for the sparring competition. And guess who was slated in the last division of the night on that court? Yeah. So my husband and kids were of course tired and antsy and bored. I wouldn't put them through that again.

So the evening's winding down, and there's two courts still active. The other court has a black belt final with one of my classmates in it. The two instructors from Amherst (Master Chong and Miss Perkins) still here are at that match. And over on my court, I'm facing one of the two Cortland college students in the division. Which means that the whole Cortland team is right there to cheer her on. Well, my family is still there, the good troopers that they are, but no Amherst students to cheer me on, and no coach in my corner.

The match begins, and I don't remember, I think it was two rounds of two minutes (doesn't matter). I was doing ok, not great, down one point at the end of the first round. About halfway through the second round I clobbered my opponent in the jaw with a closing kick and she literally scrambled crawling off the court. I had not put a lot behind the kick, but it was enough.

Now I'm standing in the middle of the court, not knowing what to do, with no coach in my corner to guide me, and I'm terrified that I hurt this girl. She's examined and comforted and cheered on by her 40 or 50 Cortland companions, while the one judge from Amherst finally catches my eye and motions me to my chair to await the result of the blow. I sit down, so very, very alone.

My opponent returns to the court perhaps 3 minutes later. Thankfully she seems unhurt. But now she's angry and motivated and has a whole crowd of supporters behind her, and I'm just mentally shattered. I honestly can't tell you how the rest of the match played out, except that I was very tentative. Hell, I don't even know if I scored a point or lost a penalty point from the head kick. Anyway, she wonthe match, and lost the final to the other Cortland student - gee, match up two mid-30's SAHMs of no particular athletic talent against two college kids and figure out who's going to come out better in the end.

I was unreasonably upset. Not at losing the match, which I had expected anyway, but because I had failed myself psychologically, and because I felt abandoned. Now, to the credit of the Cortland kids, a couple of them had some positive words for me. Master P (who was the head judge at the court) even consoled me, which was both appreciated and a cause for embarassment to me (since I shouldn't need bucking up like a 10-year-old kid). He said that the match was close. He might have just been saying that, but I really don't know.

Thankfully I did manage to mostly protect the injured hand during the match - I think I took one blow on it that made it smart, but no big deal, and she didn't go out of her way to attack the hand.

But I was so angry. I marched out of there with barely a glance at my instructors as I passed by, and I was not entirely able to control my vitriol in front of my children (who were of course very tired and cranky by now, since it's past their bedtime). It reflects badly on me as a person, I know, but if nothing else I am brutally honest with myself. If that means admitting to a lapse of maturity, then so be it.

I'm glad to have told the story, because I kept most of it under wraps. Nobody seemed to want to hear about it at school, and I was certainly reluctant to expound upon my own failings there. And I had put my husband through enough hell with my ranting over a 24-hour period that I didn't want to burden anyone else with it.