The Veledrome in Manchester, once again hosted the BTCB National Championships, on the 2nd and 3rd May. With Olympians Michael Harvey and Aaron Cook competing in this event along with their fellow full time athletes, this National Championships was sure to be one of the best to date. This year Wessex TKD took a smaller team than the previous, with Kayleigh Broom having a long lasting injury and other players moving on. Although the numbers where low, the performance and quality we took away had massively improved. The first day saw the A-class juniors and senior athletes: First up was Wayne. As per normal Wayne never seems to get the good side of the draw, and without fail, his first match was against Michael Harvey, former Beijing 2008 Olympian. There are not many good points of having Michael as your first opponent, but one thing that helped relax Wayne was the fact nobody expected him to win. This calmed the nerves and made Wayne look forward to having the chance to fight an Olympian and helped him just concentrate on putting up a good performance. Having worked on a few things in training, Wayne managed to put this into excellent practise; the score after the first round was 2-1. The second round Wayne managed to bring the score back to 2-2 with a great back kick. This took them into the final round at 2-2, After both fighters waiting around too long, the ref deducted another half a point which then made Michael go up 3-2. With only a few seconds left in the round this meant Wayne had to attack to get the point back, falling into Michael’s game; ending the match 4-2. This fight was probably the best we have ever seen Wayne fight, a really good performance which we all knew he had inside him. With a lot of coaches coming up to me and saying how well he fought, me and Wayne are very happy with how he performed!!! Next up was Lottie. With the National team coaches selecting the final places for the Junior European Championships, this was definitely a competition Lottie needed to perform in! Lottie firstly came up against Lauren Newton from Scorpions who are a highly respected club in Great Britain. However this did not faze Lottie as she knew she had a job to do. Within the first round the match had to be stopped, Lottie dug in a counter bitchagi which folded the girl and was counted out which took Lottie to the Semi final. Her next opponent was Nicole McGregor from TKD Tigers. This fight was probably the best Lottie has ever fought. She totally outclassed her opponent with several headshots. The fight ended soon into the second round with an impressive 8-1 win. With two very good performances this then took Lottie into her third consecutive British Championship final. Lottie was now to face Jade Jones from Manchester Ace’s. However this match should never have taken place due to Jade being a -52 player. Jade was moved into -49’s as there were no other competitors in -52. Lottie was still determined to step into the ring and put up a tough fight. The first round Lottie stayed very cagey not giving anything away and went in after the first round 0-0. Unfortunately half way through the second round, Lottie went for a long range shot and missed which caused her to jar her knee. Lottie could not kick and barely stand on her leg, she then went down 2-0, and was clearly struggling, so I threw the towel in. I knew Lottie could possibly be damaging her knee even more and as a coach I take my players safety very seriously so I pulled her out of the fight. It was a real shame Lottie got injured as she was taking the girl all the way until the unfortunate injury. The next person to fight in the advanced junior category was Melissa. Melissa was straight through to the semi-final and came up against Shannon Kincade from Heart of England. Melissa managed to come through this fight on top, with a lot of great exchanges and some quality countering she went on to win with the 12 point ceiling. A great fight which took Melissa into yet another British Championship final. This was to be one of the easiest finals Melissa will ever encounter. Her opponent Samantha King from Ultimate pulled out of the fight even though she had a straight bye into the final. This crowned Melissa a 3 times British Champion. Lastly was Katy; she had been given a bye straight into the final. This was to be Katy’s first Junior advanced fight. Unfortunately nerves got the best of Katy and the fight didn’t last long. Her opponent was an excellent counter player and Katy just did not stop kicking, she would have got away with this in novice but in an advanced category her opponent was a lot more tactically aware and quickly finished the fight 7-0. It was real unlucky for Katy but hopefully next time she will be more aware of how to take a step back when down a few points and think about changing what she’s doing. Overall after the first day of competition, I am pleased to say we saw an absolutely outstanding performance from our advanced fighters. The following day took our Novice senior competitors and Advanced Cadets to the mat. First up was Chelsea. With no body in Chelsea’s weight this meant she was an automatic National Champion. Although we weren’t going to let Chelsea pay a lot of money over the weekend to just pick up a medal. This meant Chelsea was forced to fight up a weight category. Being so young the next weight up was -45kg, a massive jump of 5kg from what Chelsea was entered in. Due to the weight difference Chelsea got bullied in the ring as she struggled with a massive difference in strength. Chelsea managed to score a couple of great counters but unfortunately she was up against it and lost her fight. A real shame nobody was in her weight as I feel she would have done very well against someone her own size!!! Next up was Abi. With only 2 competitors in Abi’s weight category this meant it was a straight final. Abi came up against a much taller opponent from Puma. Abi went down in the first few rounds, but as we all know Abi never gives in and will fight till the end. With some careful coaching and great fighting spirit she managed to bring the fight back. Abi pulled off a great counter back leg bitchagi to beat her opponent in the final few seconds. Once again Abi didn’t make it easy for herself, but what matters is she came away with a gold medal!! Now was time for our Novice seniors to take to the mat. Cedric and Arkan had both been entered into the same weight due to Aakan also having no competitors in his weight category. This meant Cedric had to beat his opponent to fight Arkan in the final as there were only 3 fighters in this weight. Before I start I would just like to make clear that Cedric is a 40 year old man, he is probably one of the fittest 40 year old fighters around. Cedric totally outclassed his opponent and it only took 2 rounds before Cedric managed to knock his opponent out with an awesome back leg chop kick. His opponent went down for the 10 count, he tried to stand back up but once again hit the deck hard as he could not get his vision back. This took Cedric to fight his team mate in the final. This was the last fight of the day for Wessex. Even though the final was between two team mates, only the thought of gold was going through their minds. It was a very well spirited match, both competitors going all out for the win. They both hit each other with some cracking shots. Arkan managed to go up early in the fight and kept his cool to take the victory. There was to be no hard feelings between any of the fighters as all it meant was gold and silver for Wessex. A great performance from both fighters and they should be very pleased with what both of them managed to achieve that day. Overall I am extremely pleased with the results we had this weekend. We had a lot of ups and downs throughout both days of competition. Every fighter that competed in this championship did themselves and Wessex TKD very proud. Congratulations to everyone!!!!! |