Congratulations to our students who successfully tested at Oneonta Taekwon-Do last week.  The test featured demonstrations by Lori and Ben, Jake and Guaire, Kent and Finn, and Cael.

Please see their individual posts for videos or visit our YouTube channel to browse our entire archive.

Congratulations to soccer star Cael “McLegs” McCabe on earning his first black stripe.

After demonstrating red belt level kicking techniques with legs made like rubber bamboo,

and Hwa-Rang,

he broke 2 boards with each leg using back kicks.

Finally, he sparred with his cousin Finn.

We hope Cael has a successful fall soccer season and look forward to his return to the black belt path in winter.

Kent made his first appearance at a promotion test in Oneonta. He demonstrated Dan-Gun and basic techniques along with step sparring before finally breaking a board with a rear leg side kick.

Congratulations to Phineas Brown Collins on earning his blue belt. Blue belt signifies “the plant reaching up to the sky”, indicative of Finn’s strength and power. His precise movements in Yul-Gok are indicative of his dedicated practice and we are proud of his growth and successes.

It was fortunate that Finn could spar with his cousin Cael who earned his first black stripe:

The smooth and graceful movements of Guaire are nicely complemented by the intense powerful force of Jake as they earn their green stripes.
Congratulations to both boys on their fine achievement.

Congratulations to our new Black Belts!

After training long and hard Kristian Frye, John Buck and Priscilla McCabe have earned their first Dan.

Master Kelly, a friend of Mr. Mannion’s was supposed to attend and administer the test, but due to vehicular issues was sadly, unable to attend.

The black belt test was long and tested their strength. The test started at 3:30 pm yesterday with a 2 mile run that all three completed under 18 minutes. Afterwards, the three took a written exam to test their knowledge of Taekwon-Do. At the promotion test that evening, the three demonstrated four different three kick combinations followed by four different forms that the three had learned in their training. The four patterns that John, Priscilla and Kristian showed were Choong-Moo, Hwa-Rang, Joong-Gun, and Won-Hyo.

The three showed the outcome of their hard work, with strong and percise forms. After multiple rounds of free fighting amongst the participants, They each had to perform three different breaks, as can be seen in the embedded video(s).

The three performed excellently and we are very proud to welcome Mr. Buck, Mrs. McCabe and Mr. Frye as black belts.

John Buck, Priscilla McCabe, Ray Mannion, Kristian Frye

Oneonta Taekwon-Do School picture July 2010

John Buck, Priscilla McCabe, and Kristian Frye earned their black belts on July 22, 2010

Our promotion testing this past week was an interesting one. We had two black belt interim tests and our lowest rank testing was a green belt.

Everyone had trouble breaking boards it seemed. It’s been my experience that sometimes you just get a tough batch of boards.

I hope everyone took away some confidence and determination from this test. Sometimes you break the boards and it is easy. Sometimes it doesn’t work and it is not so fun. But, if you never push yourself too far, you never know how far you can go.

I’m very proud of the dedicated training put forth by all of our students who tested this time around. Please enjoy starting over and taking the time to make corrections and focus on the improvements you need to make for your next tests.

Unfortunately, I did a lousy job as cameraman. Please offer to help next time so that everyone gets a chance to review their test. I have no videos of the red belts at all and I missed a couple of board breaks and patterns.

In the month of June, please expect to have one night of classes at Neawha Park!

Phineas Collins-Brown earns blue stripe

Tyler and Terri earning red stripes

Tom and Chris earn red stripes

Owen McCabe board breaks and sparring

Brian Davis interim pattern demonstrations

Oneonta Taekwon-Do sent two representatives to Grandmaster Kim’s April Championship in New York City. This is the first time anyone from our school has gone to compete. Both students returned with trophies. We are very proud of Mr. McCabe and Finn. We greatly appreciate their commitment and the time dedicated by Finn’s dad, Richard for making the drive.

What follows is Finn’s summary of the day.  Please be sure to congratulate Finn and Owen on their accomplishments!

On April 24, a sunny Saturday morning, I took a trip with my father and my cousin Owen, a blackbelt, down to Manhattan in order to attend Grandmaster Kim’s Interschool Taekwondo competition. After our long, multiple hour drive, and after finding adequate parking, we arrived at Master Kim’s to find the place packed almost shoulder to shoulder with young students and their parents.

The kids picked out their breaking boards, and then we all sat for Master Kim’s speech. The day’s events started with the junior demonstration team, doing board breaks and multiple participant patterns. At one point, they even did Choong-Moo with 6 people standing in a circle. Next on the list was the junior competition, starting with board breaks, then patterns, and then free fighting. I recall one small girl whose favourite kick was a counter-attacking back kick. She looked like a mini tornado!

After the kid’s competition, it was time for the adults to begin. The competition started again with board breaks, in which I broke two boards with a left back kick, two boards with a right back kick, and a board with a punch. I earned second place. After that was the pattern section of the tournament. I performed Do-San, after a gentleman recommended that I perform the pattern that I most recently passed a test for, as apposed to performing a pattern that I had recently begun practicing. I won second place in this, as well.

At last came the free-fighting. I fought a yellow belt with a green stripe, the only opponent in my belt range and weight class. After two rounds, we were tied two for two. The judges decided it was time for sudden death. Taking a note from a blackbelt interim test I once saw, I decided to strike quickly, immediately after the sparring high-five with a left punch to the center of the pad. One of the judges decided that this was bad sportsmanship, and decided to deduct one point from my score, effectively killing my chances of winning. After speaking with Grandmaster Kim, the judges decided to simply start sudden death over again. I struck quickly, with one or two combinations, finally sticking a front turning kick to the chestguard of my opponent. I won first place in sparring.

Owen had won a first place trophy in sparring and a second place trophy in board breaking. Finally, after a long day, we decided it was time to go home. I suppose I’ll leave out the boring part of the story about the terrible restaurant and nearly running out of gas in Worcester.

Congratulations to all those who tested. This was a pretty large test. Thanks to Theo and Finn for their help in “producing” the videos. Thanks also to Terri for being the videographer.

Finn and Dylan

Theo

The Hills

The Cael

Red belt patterns, sparring, and board breaking

By the way, did you know that students have sort of a “home page” on this website?
You can type in http://oneontatkd.com/wordpress/tag/ followed by the student’s first name and last name separated by a hyphen in lower case. This url will bring up all archived articles “tagged” with the student’s name. For example, Dylan Winsor’s page would be:
http://oneontatkd.com/wordpress/tag/dylan-winsor/

Please download and print our school calendar for 2010.

This calendar contains test dates, closings, as well as Taekwon-Do International events and the dates for Grandmaster Kim’s summer camp.*

*Calendar is subject to change

otkd 2010 calendar

Thanks and congratulations to everyone who tested.  It was great to close the year with a black belt interim test and a long overdue promotion for Cael McCabe.

I’ve posted the videos for each student in it’s own article:

Brian Davis 2nd Dan interim test

Finn Brown-Collins earns yellow belt

Jennifer Butler earns blue stripe

Terri Graig earns a blue belt

Cael McCabe earns his 2nd red stripe

It was great fun to finally do a flying side kick.  Thanks to Jennifer and Terri for their trust and thanks to Mr McCabe and Mr. Goodrich for bravely allowing me to run at them full speed.