U.S. West Coast Taekwondo-Sherwood: 2012 US National Open Taekwondo Championship

Collin and his 4 Gold Medals!

Congratulations to all our students who competed at the 2012 US National Open last weekend! Sherwood had 24 students participating and they brought home 18 Gold Medals, 13 Silver Medals and 11 Bronze Medals. I was very proud of everyone's performances. Some were competing in their first tournament like Miss Moira, Mr. Ty and Mr. Kaden, others were old hands at competing like Mr. Collin and Mr. Shaun! Collin was the star of the day with a sweep or 4 Gold Medals in 4 events, with Shaun right behind with 3 Gold, 1 Silver and 1 Bronze!

The format for this years tournament was changed from previous years. This year it was organized by age groups which facilitated a much smoother event. Competitors were able to arrive just before their events, compete and then leave when they were done. At past tournaments if you were competing in forms and sparring you needed to be there from the beginning of the tournament to the end. This change was met with rave reviews by competitors, parents and staff alike!

Shaun is happy about his 5 Medals!

I want to thank Miss Shannon McCosh for all her help during the tournament this year! She was invaluable as she ran from one ring to another making sure our students had a coach at each event. I saw a video of Collin sparring and you could see Miss Shannon running in the back ground to help Miss Audrey for her sparring match! Miss Shannon has been a great addition to our TKD Family! She made my job much easier compared to previous tournaments.

There were many competitors from Sherwood who really stepped up their game for this tournament. I wanted to point out a couple of them: I was very proud of Nathan Henninger for his first time sparring at a tournament. Nathan has been doing TKD for a while now, but just started sparring recently, so he had to compete against more experienced fighters. He was aggressive and kept the pressure on his opponent winning his first match and winning a Silver Medal! Also Nick Gette came back from a rough experience at the Pan Am Open to win his first match and earning a Silver Medal! Jeri and Jonathan Corbett just

Miss Shannon coaching Collin.

learned their yellow belt form and performed it in the pairs competition to win Gold! Emme Weger also in her first tournament earned a Gold Medal with an epic leap in flying side kick!

Thank you to all of our students and their parents who participated at this years US National Open making it a very successful event! It gives me great pleasure to see my students succeed at their endeavors, to see them exceed even their own expectations, to see them achieve something they did not know they could do, to become something the did not know the could be, to reach a goal they did not know they could reach! It is the reason I am here!

Mr. S

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