On Saturday 30th November and Sunday 1st December 2019, the University of Birmingham Taekwondo Club attended the BUCS/BSTF Autumn Championships in Ilford which had hundreds of participants from many universities across the UK. Our team competed in WT Poomsae, WT sparring, ITF sparring and ITF Chang-Hon. The Club also participated in the British Taekwondo Poomsae Nationals on Sunday 1st at The University of Worcester.
Our team of 11 competitors did amazingly well on both days of the competitions, with 1x gold medal and 4x bronze on day one and 3x gold, 1x silver and 4x bronze on day two!
BSTF/BUCS
On Saturday Ellie Parker and Jack Harrison competed together for A-Class Paired ITF Chang-Hon, demonstrating great teamwork and they came away with a bronze medal. They then performed individually in the ITF patterns for A-class where they both did us proud and Ellie came away with another bronze medal!
Zaynab Ali competed in her first C-class WT style sparring and achieved a bronze medal!
Rachel Higgins fought in both ITF and WT style sparring for B-class. It was very tough but she managed to gain gold in ITF on Saturday and a bronze in WT on Sunday!
On Sunday Marianna Hurst and Fabian Burkhardt both competed in individual A-Class WT Poomsae and both achieved a bronze medal. They then performed together in pair WT Poomsae for A-class where they showed great form and teamwork, achieving a gold medal!
Miles Dabbs participated in his first-ever WT Poomsae competition on Sunday for B-class and came away with a bronze medal! And Shan Hu who competed in A-Class WT style sparring showed amazing technique and managed to come home with a silver medal!
Jack Harrison, Grace Leppard and Jack Wright all competed in sparring at the BUCS competition and did us proud. This year was extremely hard with the competition being to a very high standard.
BT POOMSAE NATIONALS
On Sunday we also had a club member, Eleanor Warrington, compete in the British Taekwondo Poomsae Nationals at the University of Worcester. She did brilliantly and came First in the P80 category bringing our total of gold medals this weekend up to 4!
The club is immensely proud of everyone who participated, and we are extremely excited about future competitions where we hope to increase the number of club members participating.
Most importantly, we want to give our thanks to Fabian Burkhardt, Justin Tan and Abdallah Alkhalaf for coaching our team, the team who came along to cheer and our instructor Jim Clements for such invaluable support and guidance.
[Catriona Baker, Social Media Officer]