Central Districts Regional News

"On The Cutting Edge" Seminar

CD bids 'au revoir' to Mr Ng

Central Districts Esplanade Open Day Demonstration

Once a year in Palmerston North, we have the Esplanade Open Day.  This is a craft-fair, carnival, and a music concert.  Palmerston North Taekwon-Do members took the opportunity to show off our skills and organised a demonstration, with the aim of getting new members for the clubs in our area.

After finally locating the children’s stage , we ran through what we were going to do, got the boards, and left our gear under the trees.  The space was limited but we managed, with the barriers set up in front of the patch of grass.  A short warm-up then we were on.  As the stage name suggests, lots of kiddies watched in amazement as we strutted our stuff.

First up were patterns, with Do-San, Yul-Gok and Hwa-Rang.  We had gathered quite a crowd of people by this stage, which was great.  Next was one on self defence; a combination of the new and old syllabus, this saw four of the best from PNTA, Gray, Tony, Jess and Mina all getting thrown on the ground at some point.  Needless to say it looked fantastic.  In the mean time, other members were getting ready for sparring.

We did two rounds of “grading sparring”, so as not to hurt each other and to give the crowd a good show.  Finally was the most impressive part of any demo – breaking.  Half of the team smashed the boards, while the rest were holders.  Then we did two specialty breaks, tower kick and overhead kick.  After showing the overhead kick, David Burr lined up five kids from the audience and did an overhead kick over them. Cue gasps of astonishment.

We finished up with pad work, trying to get lots of the kids to come and kick or punch the pad.  We gave lots of positive encouragement and saw some real potential in some of them.  This was a good way to get children involved, and we had a good number of parents talking to Nikki Galpin (who ran the demo) as well.

One demo down – one to go.  Everything we’d in the morning was repeated in the afternoon, to an even bigger crowd.  On the whole, the day had been a great success and a lot of fun.

Demonstration Team
Organisers:  Nikki Galpin and Eliza Buckland
David Burr                                           Anna Yates
Jessica Lee                                           Freya Thompson
Tony Bishop                                         Graeme Ritchie
Emma Young                                        Emma Robinson
Mina Ueyama                                       Mike Orland
Robert Kernohan                                 Frances Kernohan

Written by Emma Robinson (PNTA) 6th Gup

Manawatu Secondary Sports Awards

Finalists in martial arts codes – Eliza Buckland, Uma Goodyer, Aramai Tahu and David Burr – all ITF WC 2006 competitors. Code winners – Uma Goodyer and David Burr Manawatu Sports Awards – finalist for coach of the year – Mr. Dave Ballard, coach ITF WC 2006 junior team (to be decided November 23rd)

Pioneer of Taekwon-Do in Dobok!

Former President of ITFNZ and Pioneer of Taekwon-Do in New Zealand, Mr Norman Ng, thrilled local students recently when he appeared in dobok as a special guest at a demonstration. The demo was for the Palmerston North Chinese Association ladies club and Mr Ng ran the demo and gave the commentary as they went. Students covered patterns, step sparring, destruction and self defence which was well received.

The members all felt honoured to have been assisted and training with Mr Ng.

CD Regionals - 2003

Best Overall club: Levin.

Some junior competitors.

Central Districts Taekwon Do during the final lap of honor at the Relay for Life held in Palmerston North 8/9 March.

This is a fund raising event to help with the fight against cancer, 45+ Taekwon Do members from 4 CD clubs took part in the 24 hour relay event, split into two teams, runners and social.

Our members raised close to $5000.00 which is a great effort which went towards a total of $227000 for the weekend, fund raising was mostly through members seeking donations from friends, family, work mates.

Added incentive came from Mr Ballard who put his life long moustache on the line if PNTA raised $3000 the photo says it all.

Our team of runners put in a huge effort and ran the 2nd highest laps covered, 753 in total in the 24 hours that’s 301km and needless to say some very, very sore bodies as the event progressed.

Big thanks to those who took part and to any TKD members who made a donation to this event.

The planning is already under way for the 04 Relay for Life.

We had the esplanade open on Saturday 22nd of February 2003.

The demo was organised by Nikki Mantjika and Sherylene Kohiti, with members from all clubs and their families participating and helping run our stall.
It was a beautiful hot day, with thousands of people attending during the day.

We had one main demonstration on stage, and then continued with impromptu 20 minute demonstrations every half an hour for the rest of the day. Great effort by all those involved, they must have been exhausted! The crowds loved our team which was made up of members ranging in age from as young as 9 years old,with a wide representation of all belt colours.

We demonstrated patterns, sparring, pad work, flying techniques, self defence, step sparring, and breaking.
A lot of compliments were received, many were very interested in joining as a result of a brilliant demonstration of Taekwon-Do skills.