13.9.2010 / Ladronkafest (www) presentation and demonstration of Taekwon-do

Sunny day

Our students took part in Ladronkafest on Saturday September 11. It is huge leisure activities´ festival of Prague 6 in which we took part for the second time (but it was my first time because of leg fracture I had last year and I am happy that I had opportunity to be there this year).

Me, Pavel Šnábl and Michal Zacharuk came to Ladronka shortly before 9 A.M. After moment we saw cyclotaekwondist Svíťa, rushing for us to show us our place. Both Godzillas (Petr and Lukáš Legner) were there and Vláďa arrived with all of our equipment. Our first task was to prepare our presentation. Building tent we got from organizers was piece of cake, but second tent we got from Theo was kind of riddle (fortunately few of us
studies technical university :o) Other task was to fix our Sonkal banner to tent without a string (Pavel said: „We had no string at tournament too so we made sewing from some string remains we found somewhere“). Luckily Vláďa had some in car :o)

Rest of our team arrived around 10 A.M. with Monika (Verča, Kristýna, Matouš Jakubec, Adam Reichel, David Pařízek, Tomáš Pavlíček, Adam Suchopár, Michal Hamouz, Lukáš Veverka, Jirka Novák and Roman Kremser). Even those who did not participate in demonstration arrived – Pavel Jizba and Honza Dvořáček. Being complete team we started to finalize the demonstration.

Our demonstration started after short interview. Girls started with team pattern of high standard and I think we kept it through whole demo. Everyone practiced with maximal effort motivated by Gladiator soundtrack. Audience gave us big applause with commentator saying „That was a ride. That was Taekwon-do.“ I though the biggest part of work is behind us, but I was wrong. We made two groups, which changed every hour to demonstrate, practice and lead trainings for public. Other group should have time to enjoy Ladronkafest. But it did not work as we planned, people were coming in crowds, our small boys took leaflets and ran through whole Ladronka to give it to people and we practiced and taught people taekwondo basics (and sometimes even more :o). When no one wanted to practice, we use time to our own training what always brought new people. Some of them were really motivated, so planned 15 minutes of training often changed too much longer time. I really enjoyed that everyone took part in this process, not only black belts, but also the youngest with yellow and green belts and did also great job. We were really perfectly working team.

There were about 70 posts of various leisure activities. Some of organization (including us) were chosen to prepare special tasks, if person was able to succeed in it, he got stamp, with 12 or more stamps you had chance to win some nice prizes. I write about this because it was sometimes hard to recognize who wants to really practice and who’s there just for a stamp. So some of them said after 30minues of hard training with tired face: „Do I get a stamp?“ , but who survived my training always got it. At least they have some taekwondo experience now :o) I have to say that Kristýna Hudková won this competition (and she was second last year) – what a luck!!!

I also remember when we went to back up Jakub Hořínek’s band (he is former Sonkal member) and saw many people with black eyes and scars. „Some street fight on Ladronka?“ was my first thought, but I found out that emergency department of Prague 6 camouflages all volunteers as if they were after some accident.

Thing that shocked us was that we got title for the best post of festival. It was the greatest recompense and compliment we could get and I hope that some beginners will join Sonkal.
I want to thank everyone for help, it was wonderful and I hope we will do it again next year.

The Magician (Tomáš Vodička)

In video gallery is available movie about Sonkal"s demonstration.