Gold Medal Winners

Good morning! Well, the Dungan Five had a very busy weekend. It all started on Saturday with the Second Annual Global Sports Extreme Tae Kwon Do Tournament. This would be Graham and Sydney's first Tae Kwon Do tournament and I can tell you that the nerves were frazzled early Saturday morning. No, not the kids nerves. Ours! They were fine. I guess to them it was just another day of sibling violence. For us, though, it was another giant leap for twerphood.

Would Sydney keep it together?

Would Graham survive?

Well, as you can tell from the pictures below the kids did absolutely fabulously.


While you can't tell from the pictures, Graham and Sydney both won four medals. They both won gold in their forms. Forms are essentially choreographed and memorized fights. They both had to go through a series of kicks, punches, and blocks. They both performed them perfectly. It is also worth noting that they also achieved silver medals in the synchronized forms. I.e. they both performed their forms together. They did an excellent job but lost out to a mother/son team who were both blue/red belts and extremely talented.

Their third medal was a participation medal that they earned for successfully breaking a block of wood. That is the reason they are holding the broken pieces of wood up in the pictures. Believe it or not, the wood is almost 1/2 inch thick - pretty impressive if you ask me. I was a little skeptical that they would be able to do it but, low and behold, they both snapped them right in half with their fists.

Their final medals were in sparring. While they have both practiced a bit in class this was their first official fight. It took a while for them to get used to how the scoring worked (us too!). However, they learned quickly. Unfortunately, they both lost their first bouts. This was not surprising as they both fought children and/or siblings of two of the instructors. These were kiddos that were schooled in competition and often traveling with GSX's junior Olympic team. They new the ropes and exactly what to do. None the less, both Graham and Ainsley stayed in the frey. Their next bouts were much better. Graham did an excellent job - obliterating his opponent. Sydney had a little more difficulty. She was fighting someone that had 2 degrees of belts above her. None the less she fought valiantly. The final score was huge, 30 to 30 - an enormous score in sparring. That means they both individually landed 30 unanswered punches or kicks on their opponent. The match was settled by a sudden death first point match. The kicks landed almost simultaneously. Unfortunately, the match was given to Sydney's opponent. However, I can tell you that she actually won. Unfortunately, the judges on the other side of the ring just didn't see it and we only had one judge on our side. In the end, Sydney won a bronze and Graham won a silver medal. Regardless, I could not have been more proud of our champions.

It was one giant leap of character. This was great for both of them.

It was a purpose building exercise.