1.6.2015 / Sonkal Open (results

25%

On Saturday early morning of the last weekend of May Taekwon-Do boys and Taekwon-Do girls started to assemble before the sport hall of primary school of Petřiny south.
For a while it looked that the crowd mistook the entrance to the hall for an underground station nearby. However, when the hour hand showed eight o´clock everybody moved into the bowels of the hall, where the registration, weighing and other necessary stuff for the initiation of the competition followed.

And why the title of the article says 25%? That means a numeral expression of the growth of the number of competitors compared to last year. Unlike Karel Gott we really did not expect it. Finally the competition tilt were attending 210 pupils, juniors and seniors, of course both men and women.

At 10:30 we started with the parade of the 20 attending schools of whole Czech and Slovakia republic. After a short welcoming the tilts of patterns of pupils category on three rings began. Those categories were very numerous and the competition system “each to each” generated too many matches. The biggest category was “beginners” yellow belts, where, as their first match, were competing 28 pupils. All of them seemed dour and had a big desire not to be easy opponent for the others. Patterns passed on to sparring of the youngest and despite the low age and small or nearly none experiences they showed really performance. As the most successful competitors of the pupil category were announced – Antonín Mládek (GBHS) and Vivien Ballayová (Team Slovakia).

After a lunch, a contrasting change followed, for pupils were replaced by seniors, which means adults. Spectators and competitors could see on the tatami significantly larger number of red and black belts. The most attractive match was the finale of seniors of 1st degree black belt category. There were competing two representatives of the organizing school Sonkal, Pavel Zavadil and Jiří Novák. Performances of both competitors were almost equal, so referees had to assess them as a drawn four times in sequence. Finally the victory went to the hands of Jiří Novák, the vice champion of Europe. Sparring also offered very interesting matches of currents and former members of Czech national team, who were capably chased by competitors of Slovakia. Membership of national team demonstrated Tomáš Vodička, who won in his category under 71 kg as well as in higher category under 78 kg. The goblets intended for the most successful seniors took over Tomáš Vodička and Jana Kovářová (both of them are from Sonkal school).

The last act of Sonkal Open belonged to male and female junior category. Due to the possibility of competing in higher age group, many of pupils were competing here as well. Especially in the patterns they broke through even against more skilled opponents. For example Ondřej Faltin (9-year-old) defeated all of the juniors. At the end of day significantly broke through two members of Czech national team – Dominik Sluka (school of Velešín) and Jiří Novák (Sonkal). Both of them won in two categories of weight. Jiří Novák and Lenka Hrstková (both from Sonkal) were awarded by goblets for most successful junior competitors.

Compared to last year, this year was more abundant as for the number of competitors and matches. Unfortunately that affected the time schedule of the whole competition. After the final line-up were passed on the goblets to three most successful schools – the 1st Sonkal Prague, the 2nd Hwa-Rang and the 3rd Karviná.

We are looking forward to meeting you in Prague next year.