TKD Competition

Took part in TKD competiton on the 23rd, Monday. Skipped school for the entire day. Guessed I missed out a lot on lessons that day. Although I just joined the team, I took part as a competitor in the yellow belt category.

And then, there's the part I am really pissed off by. Most of the judges for the competition were from a specific school, let's call it M. My school didn't have a judge on the panel. Having trained so hard, from after school till late at night everyday for 4 weeks, we could see we were much better than the other schools in the yellow belt pattern. Yet, for the my mat especially, the judges were completely unfair. Despite doing the pattern better than most, the competitors from our school were given extremely low marks in comparison. For example, although our kicks and moves are sharper and faster, the judges did not give us the marks we deserve. Instead, we were given marks similar to those who had no speed or accuracy in their moves. In fact, just because some of them kick slightly higher than us, they were given much higher marks. The fact that the judges ignored the precision of the footwork and the moves, and the power placed into our execution, which should have been noted and judged as well, just goes to show that they are bias against us. In fact, M gained top place for the boys category instead.

Although I understand the competitor from M that gained top place was indeed more experienced in TKD than us, I do believe that we should have achieved second or third position in individuals and first place in team. Yet, due to the bias judges, despite having comparitive performance to the best in individuals and executing an excellent team pattern, our scores were nowhere close to what was deserved. Instead, none of the competitors from my team, or even my school, that participated on that specific mat with the bias judges was able to obtain what they deserved. This goes for my seniors as well despite having participated and achieving high positions since the previous years. For my team, the only medal we achieved was fourth in team pattern.

To show further evidence, our female teams were able to achieve overall first position for the competition. It isn't as if we were worse off than them in our pattern or that our competition was stronger, it was simply just that our judges were bias! Instead, we were barely able to take 4th place overall for the males category.

I'm not complaining here becase we were unable to get to top three. Instead I'm complaining because despite our hardwork, and excellent performance during the competition, the bias judges did not wish to acknowledge us and instead give us scores comparitive to the worst. It is not as if we are a school with a lousy team, instead, the TKD has been winning top three positions every year before.

I am thus saddened and outraged by the fact that they dare feel satisfied with what they gained by such methods. What happened to the values of sportsmanship?! In fact, I heard from a friend that they dare proclaimed having worked hard for the competition thus enabling them to achieve top position during the competition. Although a few days have passed since the competition, I am still unable to rid of my anger for M. I hope that it would be just this once that there was no sportsmanship shown in this competition, otherqise I'm really gonna snap the next time I see such nonsense.