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

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/

Priscilla, Kris, John, and Ken all earn black stripes at their promotion test in January, 2010.

John and Kris perform the pattern Hwa-Rang.

Now, it’s Ken and Priscilla’s turn:

Cael McCabe earns his red belt. In this post are videos of Cael demonstrating Toi-Gye, board breaking, and sparring with Tom Hill.

Cael performs the pattern Toi-Gye.

Cael breaks two boards with a back kick, and two boards with a cross-behind side kick. Keep in mind the force that must be generated to break 1 and 1/2 inches of pine wood.

Tom, Christina, and Tyler Hill earn their red stripes.

The Hill Family performs the pattern Joong-Gun.

Finn Brown earns his green stripe, while Dylan Winsor earns a green belt

Dylan Windsor performs the Do-San pattern, while Finn Brown performs Dan-Gun.

Finn breaks a board with a lead-leg side kick, Dylan breaks a board with a rear-leg side kick.
With stationary side kicks, there is always the challenge of producing momentum. These boards are 3/4 inch pine.

Both Finn and Dylan show their courtesy by bowing to the board holders, who risked their fingers to assist the test.

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.

Congratulations to David Howard on his successful promotion to blue stripe.  His test required a demonstration of Won-Hyo and a rear leg sidekick to break 2 boards in addition to fundamentals and self-defense.

Congratulations to Matt Goodrich on successfully earning his 1st degree black belt. Matt is now certified by Taekwon-Do International to be a black belt in good standing.

For his promotion test, Matt traveled to NYC with his family and fellow Oneonta Taekwon-Do schoolmate John Buck. He completed a written exam, an endurance test, and then gave a demonstration including 3 patterns, basic combinations, sparring, and 3 different board breaks.

In addition to the physical requirements, Taekwon-Do International requires proven examples of living up to the Tenets of Taekwon-Do.

Congratulations to Matt on this significant milestone. Please enjoy the video highlights below and offer Matt your congratulations next time you see him.

Congratulations to Ms. Jennifer Butler on earning her green stripe. Dan-Gun is a pattern with 21 movements and is named after the Holy Dan Gun, the legendary founder of Korea. All of the punches in Dan-Gun are high punches. We hope Jennifer enjoys Do-San even more than Dan-Gun!