The Isle of Wight Tae Kwon-Do Club has started 2016 with tournament success after 6 members of the club competed at the Professional Unification of Martial Arts (PUMA) International Open Championships.
The event, held in Swindon, had more than 500 competitors and was held over the weekend of 27th & 28th February.
Saturday saw the Black Belts in action and the club’s chief instructor, Pete Scotcher (4th Degree Black Belt) won Gold in the 2nd Degree and above pattern section. Joe Ramskill (pictured left) had success in the 1st Degree patterns section and won a Bronze medal. Joe was also unlucky to miss out on medals in the sparring and destruction (board breaking) divisions.
Sunday was the turn of the colour belts and saw the only junior selected, 9-year-old Charlie Holland (pictured right), fight bravely in his sparring division and was close to coming away with a medal.
Near the end of the day the club’s instructors, coaches and supporters had a frenzy of action as the club’s last 3 fighters were all called to separate rings at once. Jon Page, who was attending his first tournament, came up against a higher grade and more experienced competitor but Jon fought well – it was a close call but Jon missed out on Bronze. Matt Cooper, who was also competing for the first time, narrowly lost in his final match thus winning Silver. Jake Lewis, who was in the higher grade division was also defeated in the final but still won Silver.
Also in February the club had a Black Belt grading examination with guest examiner Master Phil Thomas (6th degree Black Belt) joining the grading panel. After a gruelling 3 hour test of sparring, patterns, ground work, board breaking, self-defence, terminology and theory questions, Vicky Salter was successfully promoted to 3rd Degree Black Belt and David Yates, Josh Glen, Patrick Newman, Nadia Vloemans and Kayden Yates all promoted to 2nd Degree Black Belt, with Kayden being one of the youngest in the country.
Scott Morrison, Jack Redfern and Callum Winter were promoted to 1st Degree Black Belt.
In October this year the club will be taking part in a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest Tae Kwon-Do display. More information is available at www.iowtkd.com.
