4.7.2019 / Sonkal Open

We can do it in another hall

Medals hung on successful necks, cups passed into even more successful hands, the hall is empty as if no tournament has taken place. So we could characterize the hectic Saturday, when more than 220 taekwondists and taekwondists from 23 schools in the Czech Republic and Slovakia met in Ruzyně sports hall.
It is 7:30 Saturday 25th of May and crowds of sonkal’s boys and girls occupie the TJ Ruzyně Hall. Intensive preparation of sports hall begins - tables, tatami, decoration, registration, weighing…. Everything goes at the speed of serial production in a stale factory :-)

8:00 starts registration of competitors and also their weighing. After 9 o’clock the noise of the people in the hall stops and referees' meeting begins, with 45 of them. This is followed by a short coaching session where details are specified as to how they will compete in groups and what will be the order of age groups and competition categories.

Shortly after 10 o'clock the show has started and a slight nervousness is seen on the contestants because it will break out soon. Above all, it is good to motivate students and pupils to leave everything in their competitive performances. After receiving positive response we are going to compete. Within minutes, the first pattern battles will be played on five rings and the competition runs at a high tempo. Nobody from organization team is having a rest because of high tempo of the tournament. Every ring is filled with categories. Competitors continually decorated with medals and other trophies! The patterns are pushing out by matsogi and blue belts and higher ones show off what they can do in the most challenging taekwondo ITF discipline.

Around 12:30, the first referee leaves for a lunch break, and unfortunately, she has the greatest difficulty of the competition. The restaurant planned it badly and at lunch it was decided that there would be a lot of orders coming from the other contestants, so the judges «having lunch" for an hour…

After the break, the first cups go to the hands of the most successful pupils,
Younger student - Štěpán Ševčík, Třeboň
Younger student - Petra Heydušková, Silla
Older student - Adam Szkandera, Joomuk
Teenage Girls - Nikola Kaprálová, Nomo

By the way in the youngest categories we could seen some famous names of Czech taekwondo history, but actually they were younger generation - Petra Heydušková and Anna Weidlichová won pattern categories and made their parents so proud.

After the youngest categories there are next competitors from juniors and seniors categories with color belts. Juniors with black belts are coming just after them. There are some of the biggest stars - Michal Kaňka, who is collected gold medals in green belts, Ondra Faltin, who is keeping dominating in red belts, Honza Veškrna, who also dominate in black belts. In juniors, there are several current or former representatives in black belts! Honza Veškrna beats his representative colleagues Honza Zachrdl and Dominik Čermák in a matsogi and it’s really pleasure to watch their quick techniques and turning kicks.

The last one on the tatami is also casting black belts of seniors. In this case, we are able to see some interesting fights between current and former representatives - Anna Pösingerová vs. Renta Ramšáková, Přemysl Šesták versus Jirka Novák. And we would count more fights! Sometimes youth won, sometimes experience gave no chances. :-D

17:45 - decorating best juniors and seniors.
Youth junior - Ondřej Faltin, Sonkal
Youth junior female - Aneta Nekorancová, Ge-Baek
Older junior - Jan Veškrna, Sonkal
Older junior female - Anežka Čurdová, Třeboň
Senior - Jiri Novak, Sonkal
Senior female - Tereza Stekerova, Sonkal

17:50 - We are awarding three best schools of Sonkal Open 2019
The most successful school with the 14 gold, 8 silver and 6 bronze medals became the organizing Sonkal. Silly took the second place with a score of 7-7-5 and Třeboň on a third place 6-9-3!
Complete results lists can be found HERE.


It is 18:45 and the hall is empty, van full of material is loaded and it’s going to Nymburk with a stopover on Petřiny :-)

An interesting feature at the end is the medal harvest of the Faltins family - the youngest Simona won the gold medal between the yellow belts of the younger girls, Ondra took gold in patterns and matsogi of the younger juniors, and their father - Jirka was silver among the seniors I. Dan. However, this is definitely successful veteran representative!

I would like to thank for participation and great performances to all competitors and coaches, the judges for their all-day vigilance and last but not least the Czech Taekwon-Do ITF Association for the financial support and loan of material, Mr. Miroslav Sobotka and his company Hayashi for vouchers for the most successful individuals! At the very end, both Jirka Novaks for helping me on Friday and Saturday!

Cinematographer Honza Horvát moved to the competition and collected material for promo videos that have a common #jedenduvod. Look forward to them in the coming days :-)