Taekwon-do: Scottish victory

Oct 29 2008 by Donald Morton, Stirling Observer Wednesday

STIRLING Global Taekwon-do School, which is based at the Beechwood Scout Hall, proved to be top performers at the recent Scottish Championships in Grangemouth.

This year’s event was the 20th anniversary of the championships and the highlight of the weekend was a Scotland v England challenge match against a visiting team from Manchester.

The Scotland team – consisting of the top performing sparrers of the day and captained by Stirling instructor Liz McKenna – pulled out the stops to ensure a Scotland victory by six fights to one.

Instructors brother and sister team Liz and Chris McKenna both performed well – despite both being injured prior to the event. Chris won bronze in the veteran sparring division but took gold in the veteran patterns division. He was pipped to the post in the destruction event and had to settle for silver.

Liz had to content herself this year with silver in the 4th degree patterns and bronze in the middleweight sparring, being unable to kick properly to due a knee injury, and finished off her day taking silver in the female power test.

The rest of the club’s blackbelts also did well on the blackbelt day. The junior blackbelt divisions saw more than 40 competing blackbelt juniors with Mikkel and Sebastian Rasmussen, Emily Gairns, Heather Gray, Rhys McKenna and Nicole Docherty all representing and Heather and Emily taking part in their first blackbelt Scottish Championships. A special mention goes to Tony Docherty who was unable to compete due to injury but spent the whole weekend refereeing!

Mikkel improved on his last year’s performance by taking bronze in the junior male heavy sparring and the junior male power test. Sebastian and Rhys almost cleaned up in the junior light weight division with silver and bronze positions. Nicole – in her best Championships to date – became Scottish champion in the female heavy weight sparring and silver in the female special technique.

The club’s coloured belt students competed the next day with Kieran Webb winning silver in the yellow belt patterns and Lewis Swan coming in a close third in an extremely large division. Lewis went on to also win bronze in the sparring and Caitlin MacLennan, despite being the smallest in the division, won silver in the junior green/blue female sparring.

Congratulations also go to Chris McKenna 3rd Degree who won the Overall Veteran Male for the second year in a row. This title is decided after a series of three blackbelt league events held throughout the year.

Beginners are always welcome at the school on Thursdays and Sundays at the Stirling Beechwood Scout Hall and in Denny Sports Centre on Saturday mornings. For details telephone 01501 732469.