Taekwondo Success for Warwick

Having brought home 12 medals between a team of 9 at last years GTI British Championships, the Warwick Taekwon-do team had a lot to live up to as they headed down to Cheltenham on Sunday. However this year’s team of 8 men and women ranging from beginners to seasoned black belts were confident as they bundled into their warwicksport vehicle in the freezing cold sports centre car park.

A Korean martial art, competition in Taekwondo can take two forms; the demonstration of sequences of pre-ordained moves marked by a panel of judges for skill and presentation, or sparring consisting of 2 minute rounds in which points are awarded for landing kicks and punches on the opponent. As the university club has no affiliation to a governing body, to cater to all the various disciplines within the martial art, it was an intimidating prospect for the university team to attend the nationals of a close knit organisation with members who often had more experience and were older then the team themselves. However this didn’t stop the team of 8 bringing home 7 medals and trophies from what was for many their first competition.

Demonstrating the control and technical skill that Taekwondo is famous for, all the teams sparring medals came from the point-stop category in which precision is often more valuable than out and out aggression. In the women’s Green belt Point-Stop Sparring, Gursharan Amar and Namrata Bagree dominated the opposition to take first and second places and were more than happy to fight each other for the gold medal after seeing off the rest of the opposition.

In continuous sparring first year Matt Bisatt displaying impressive courage as he walked into the ring despite being out of his usual lightweight category and competing alongside heavyweights. After landing a few good points Matt took a turning kick to the face and proceeded to bleed all over the judges rushing to his aid. Going against the advice of both the first aiders and his fellow teammates Matt insisted on going back in to finish the round and held in for the final 30 seconds but was understandably unable to win the round against a strong opponent after suffering such an injury.

There was considerable success in the rest of the point-stop sparring with 3rd Year Green Belt Chris Guerin powering his way to 1st Place in the men’s lightweights utilising his signature ‘super-mario punch’ to bypass the defences of his opponents.

Despite not having competed in four years, fresher but also 2nd degree black belt Sarah Wishart calmly fought her way to victory in the women’s middle-light weights, taking Gold with a series of convincing wins. Also competing in this category was black-belt Sophia Dimitriadis however coming from a different training background Sophia was unused to the sparring and in spite of her resilience, scoring many points against each opponent with her quick kicks, was unable to place.

In the patterns category Gursharan Amar secured the team a silver medal with a pattern she had only learnt the day before. However despite admirable performances by Sarah Wishart, Chris Guerin and Namrata Bagree there were no more medals for Warwick as the stylistic differences between GTI patterns and those practiced by the team created difficulties in satisfying the judge’s criteria.

After a long day without a proper meal and with a few new (minor) injuries, the team were happy to be driven back to campus for a celebratory meal at the Duck. With 7 medals, the club has once again proved itself against competitors of all ages from across the country, and we’re looking to build on this as we take on many more challenges over the course of the year!

Results

Gursharan Amar – Gold in Women’s Green belt Light/Middle/Heavy Weight Point-Stop Sparring, Silver in Green Belt Patterns

Sarah Wishart – Gold in Women’s Black belt Middle/Light Weight Point-Stop Sparring

Chris Guerin – Gold in Men’s Green belt Lightweight Point-Stop Sparring

Robert Tang – Silver in Men’s Green/Yellow Belt Middleweight Point-Stop Sparring

Namrata Bagree – Silver in Women’s Green beltLight/Middle/Heavy Weight Point-Stop

Sparring

Chris Ellaway – Bronze in Men’s Green belt Middleweight Point