Sunday 19 July 2020

Tigers Taekwondo and Covid-19


Tigers Taekwondo and Covid-19

2020 has been well and truly upturned by the current global pandemic. Almost immediately on the back of our Victorian Bushfire Crisis, all our communities were suddenly and directly affected by Covid-19.

Our club chose to close early, some two weeks prior to actual restrictions being imposed, and just when poised to make a careful return we now face more time to wait before we can safely resume training in groups.

The YMCA has been faced with big challenges – staff layoffs and shutdown of operations, and has been working with Tigers Taekwondo to develop a new timetable/roster of classes aimed at providing families with the most opportunities to utilise their existing credit account. We’ve also been working out the details with the YMCA about what needs to be done to ensure a Covid-Safe return to training. More information to follow soon!

Term two felt very long with the required changes and restrictions, and also a sad one with the passing of our Black Belt Elder, Neil Crammer. A special award will be created to be included in our annual club awards to honour Neil’s memory.

Individually we’ve all been facing challenges both work and personal, and some of them not easy at all if they involve loss of family income or health/care issues. There are also the challenges our kids face with online/remote learning and not being able to catch up with training buddies at Taekwondo!

However, Taekwondo teaches us to persevere, and to maintain spirit, to commit to strive and to improve. Tigers Instructor Gary Thorpe has been the greatest example of this since the closure of our classes, winning a silver medal representing Australia in the 1st Oceana Open Online Poomsae Championships, and another silver in the 1st Online Daedo European Poomsae Championships!

Now in term three and on the back of Gary’s international successes and experience, he has brought to our club the opportunity for our students to compete in our own, online Poomsae competition! This will be a great way for students to ‘get remembering’ their forms during these extended restrictions, have some fun and send in their best takes! More details will follow soon.

In the meantime we encourage our students to keep stretching and to keep exercising in preparation for a return to training. Martial arts can be a lifelong journey as the path is always there – one must simply be prepared to continue, but also sometimes, to simply wait.