Hertfordshire Sports Village Hatfield Business Park – Sunday 6th October 2019
The LTSI tournament is always well organised by Grand Master Snow and his team. The introduction to the tournament was friendly way to gather the juniors together in their groups. Appears much more organised than many of the TAGB events. We went to this competition last year and again this was another fantastic competition which was very well run. The lion mascot is always a great touch and gets the children engaged.
The second competition of the weekend was only a short 5 minute journey from the Hatfield Premier Inn where we stayed overnight.
A prompt start at 9:05am with the juniors pattern categories works very well and allows the children with lesser experience compete with less pressure without the build-up waiting time. Each category was run very efficiently.
Ashton had a fantastic fight with his spin kicks going from strength to strength. He had a couple of warnings for excessive contact, however I didn’t think they were necessary. At the end of the day, they were both black belts students in the final of an English Open in a contact sport.
Some still shots of Ashton's Black Belt continuous fight
Ashton's Black Belt Continuous fight
Ashton's kicks were perfectly timed with precision and poise. Super proud of him winning Gold with such an impressive performance.
Ethan & Tyler Blue belt category
Ethan and Tyler both won 2 fights but just missed out on their third round; which were very close. They missed out on medals but gained some great experience in continuous Sparring.
What was apparent was that this category had over 40 mixed competitors ranging from green belts to black stripes!
If I could suggest one area of improvement for the tournament; it would be that if there is large division such as the 5th to 1st kup 8-9 year-old mixed category, then they should line all the kids up in height order and split it into two further divisions so that the smallest kids fight together and the larger kids fight together. There were too many poorly matched fights which saw a small blue stripe junior paired up with spar with a much taller black stripe kid; which would have been a daunting experience for the smaller and less experienced child.
Overall
Ethan and Tyler missed out on the LTSI medals today, but 6 overall including yesterday at the North Midlands TAGB Championships
Ashton LTSI Gold Sparring 🥇