You can achieve whatever you put your mind to.
Trinity Taekwon-Do recently sent two competitors to the International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) North American and Caribbean Championships.
The event, which was held at the Olympic Oval in Richmond, BC on Nov. 7 and 8, is a major tournament that was the first international event of its kind to be held in Canada by the ITF since 2007.
The large field of competition had 372 participants from Canada, USA, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago.
Participants were able to take part in a multitude of events such as individual patterns, individual free sparring, individual power breaking and special techniques breaking, prearranged sparring, team patterns, and team sparring.
One of Trinity’s up-and-coming stars, junior black belt Christian Blazina, set out for the tournament looked to prove himself at the highest level.
Blazina, was accompanied by Trinity’s head instructor Cameron Macdonald (a fifth degree black belt), who was originally making the journey to act as coach for the young man.
“They have qualifying tournaments for nationals every two years,” Macdonald said. “This was an off-year for nationals, so they decided to put together this tournament which is slightly bigger than normal.
“The sheer size of the tournament makes a lot of students, especially younger ones gun shy, but Christian wanted to go, so I went to coach him.”
While out there, Macdonald was spurred on by being around the competitive scene again, and decided to take part himself.
“I figured that since I was going all the way out there, I’d get back into competing as well,” he related. “It’s been something that I’ve been itching to do for a while.”
Blazina and Macdonald in four events at the tournament, power breaking (board breaking), patterns, individual sparring, and team sparring.
Macdonald won a gold medal in men’s hyper weight sparring, and gold in team sparring as a member of the Alberta Men’s Black Belt team. He also received a good effort mention in senior male patterns.
Blazina won a silver in the sparring as a member of the Alberta Junior Black Belt team, and also received a good effort mention in junior male patterns.
Training for an event of this caliber requires a lot of dedication, as well as very intense and rigorous work in the months leading up to the tournament.
“We regularly train two nights a week,” Macdonald confirmed. “However, to prepare for this, we cross-trained with Horizon Taekwon-Do in Airdrie a couple times and week, and then they would come train with us a couple times.
“It gives the students the chance to see other competitors and look for ways to help improve themselves.”
What’s next for Trinity?
“The next tournament is a small tournament hosted by Horizon and ourselves,” Macdonald confirmed. “The goal is to provide young students with competition experience.
“The next major tournament is the Western Canadian Championships in Regina on May 14, 2016.“I’m sure Christian and I will be there, building off the enthusiasm of this last tournament.”
