Getting ready for tournament...

Richard has a TaeKwonDo tournament tomorrow. He has competed in quite a few over the last couple of years, and he loves them. The last one was in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, it was an international tournament. Richard got his first gold medal in sparring there. He has worked so hard on sparring, so he was very happy. Forms have always come easy for him, but sparring is more difficult because he is large for his age, so when they sort the kids they put him with kids of the same size but are older than him.

This is a picture of him doing some crazy side kick:



And here he is with his medals, 1 gold for sparring, 1 bronze for traditional forms, and 1 bronze for free design form (which he put together himself, to We Are the Champions by Queen).



International tournaments are HUGE! In the above picture, they have already broken down the rings. But you can see how big the building is, imagine 50 or 60 rings, all with something like 6-10 competitors and 5 judges. After that our little regional tournament is going to seem like just another day in class!

So the tournament tomorrow, today actually, I didn't realize that it is after midnight, is here in Alamogordo at the NMSBVI (New Mexico School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, long name!). My niece and sister-in-law are competing too. I think this will be Richard's last tournament in his age class. He is 10, and in November he moves up to the "super junior" class that is 11-14 year olds. At the last one I was looking at the size of some of the 14 year olds, yikes! And Richard is big, I can't imagine how the little petite kids feel! Though I guess it may be easier to get in close to your opponent if you are small.

Richard is usually a night owl, but tonight he wanted to go to bed earlier so he wouldn't be tired tomorrow. So he took a shower and got to bed, we had some snuggle time talking about tomorrow. I have friends that have 10yo kids that don't want to snuggle anymore, I am so lucky!

I will have updates and pictures tomorrow!

Katy