Tue July 6th 2021
Hi All,
A quick note on our children's program, training dates and a summary of the grading. We will be holding session next Saturday , 10th July, then we will take a couple of weeks off over school holidays and recommence on the 31st .
On Saturday James and I had the pleasure of running a grading across our 3 children's classes. We have about 60 active children in our program currently, and just over half of them graded this time around!
In the first group (our little dragons) we had 4 whitebelts, 4 yellow belts, 1 Blue belt and 9 Red tip and double red tips grade. This is youngest grade, so it's great to see the children understand the demands of the style, get the basic movements and be able to execute them under pressure. There were some great displays of technique exhibited across the grades, with particular call out to our blue belt groups.
The Tigers group were up next. Again 18 students grading. The three whitebelts , Cohen, Divya and Ayush did a particularly good grading. Great to see. The other grades, performed solidly too and we now have more students in red belt levels than juniors. Particular call out goes too Hamish who, while being 30cm shorter than Ash demonstrated great technique and attitude during his grading. We also have two students making it to double black tip in this group - Saffron and Siobhan. Looking forward to them getting ready for their junior back belt! Also commendable was the effort and willpower seen, it is always nerve-wracking going into a grading and some of you overcame your self doubt and performed really well.
Our final group, the teenagers then came out and showed their stuff. This is a smaller,and more mature group so the demands are higher. I was particularly pleased to see our whitebelts - Mandy and Joanna progress. Neo did a great blue belt grading which has been a long time in the making (thanks Danny for stepping in as his grading partner). Sonja and Madeline showed what we expect from our seniors, a well executed disciplined display. Finally Josh and Arsh performed well under pressure and are now double black tips. Again we are looking forward to more black belts. Well done to you all
Overall, it's great and very rewarding to see everyone progress. Thanks to all the volunteers and supporters who give their time to help progress the students. The skills and life lessons Hapkido gives were all on display Saturday, well done to you all.
For those who weren’t quite ready, we hope that the grading was good motivation for you and look forward to seeing you at training.
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