Black Belt Spectacular!

My dojang hosts a yearly show as a "graduation party" of sorts for the people who got their black belts in that year. We have 2 black belt tests every year with on the order of 20 or so black belts graduating at each test. Yes, my school is big with about 400 students at any one time.

Anyway, it's called the Black Belt Spectacular and it generally involves demonstrations from every belt level and age group in the school. We just had the event this past weekend. It's not required participation. From the turnout, I would suspect about 50% of the students participated in the event.

My youngest daughter's one and only demo was a board break (step behind side kick). She performed it very well. I had the honor of being her board holder.

I was also enlisted to be the board holder for several other belt levels. Of the 4 boards I held, 2 of the people broke their boards. Each board breaker only had 1 shot at it. This is not an attempt to gloss myself but the board holder has almost as important a part in the break as the actual board breaker. It's basic physics that the holder provides an equal and opposite force to the blow in order for the board to break. I pray that the reason the boards did not break on the ones I was holding wasn't my fault, I wouldn't want to have let the board breaker down. Lucky for me, one of the successful board breakers was Kwan-ja-nim Lee's son. I didn't quite realize it at the time but figured it out when he waved back to his dad as we were leaving the floor.

My oldest daughter and I were supposed to do be in the exact same demonstrations, one called "Basic Motions" and the other the Taeguk Oh Jang form. Minutes before the "Basic Motions" demo, my daughter had disappeared and I couldn't find her. After minutes of panic, I eventually discovered she was in the bathroom but she wasn't going to come out. She had expressed a reluctance to participate in the event and I immediately thought this was an act of rebellion or else stage fright. Turns out, I was mistaken and she was actually sick. I shouldn't have doubted her. She had to skip the rest of the night and hung out by the front doors to the lobby with her mom while I finished my part in the show.

My youngest daughter has made friends with a young girl on the official "demo team" and she really wanted to see what she did during the show. She's now inspired to want to try out for the demo team. The demo was impressive and I do think my youngest daughter could make the team provided she works on her precision.

All in all, the evening was enjoyable. I was impressed by how much the black belts in the school could do. I just wish that my oldest daughter had been able to participate. Our next major event is a dojang only poomse competition in only 2 weeks where we compete individually. I'm praying for a good health for everybody.