Mon Sept. 17th 2018

This weekend 11 club members (and their families & supporters) travelled to Upper Hutt to take part in the 2nd Oceania Cup & Hapkido Festival. It has been an amazing weekend, full of drama, fierce competition, training, and some great inspiration from Grandmaster Seo & Master Choi from the World Kido Federation.

Saturday was the tournament, and the entire team made our club proud, winning medals across armed & unarmed patterns, self-defence demonstrations, and of course the sparring. At one point during the adult sparring two of the team of six adults were receiving first-aid for being knocked out during their fights - resulting in a drive to the local hospital for a concussion test (they're both OK!) The medals for sparring were fiercely contested!

After all of the scores were tallied, Isla McGoram from our junior class was awarded the Junior Oceania Cup for having the highest scores across all three events. All of the other junior members won medals for their events too, impressing the Korean judges with their 'Ki' (energy).

Among the adults Jeremy Masters took out the Oceania Cup, winning with conviction by taking out the under 86kg blackbelt sparring in style.

This is a fantastic achievement for Jeremy, Isla, and all of the competitors that took part. I'm immensely proud of how our club was represented by everyone, and thrilled when Grandmaster Scott gave me a personal compliment for running a 'very good club'.

The next day was a full day of training - I took part from 9:30 in the morning until 5 in the evening, at the end of which I was very tired, but freshly inspired for our ongoing training as a club, and my own improvement as a teacher.

So all of the NZ Hapkido silverware, and the bragging rights, now belong to KMA. The other clubs will no doubt be itching to take them back at future events, but we'll be sure to keep training hard and make that a difficult task for them!

Huge thanks to the great team at Upper Hutt Hapkido academy, led by Master Callum Forbes, along with Michael, Sean, Rhiannon, Jon-Luke and the rest of the crew, for putting on such a stellar event.

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