MTC open

Congratulations to all our competitors today!
Today we had the MTC open and roughly 10 clubs were present. It was a pretty good day with six courts running and at a guess 200 fighters competing.
I spoke with Carlo about myself entering and we chose to sit this one out focusing on Nationals in October.
This competition is designed to help in the development of athletes, simulating a real competition environment, without the pressure of it being a state or national competition. Run by volunteers of the clubs and the coaches, I went along to see what I could do to help and operated the time clock on one of the courts.
Each court has a volunteer referee, one scorer, and a time clock operator. As this was new for me and Im assuming relative new for some of the other volunteers, it's as much a learning process for the volunteers as it is for the athletes.
The scorer probably had the hardest roll, trying to determine if a kick scored without actually seeing the kick due to their position. I was often asked "did that score" and all I can answer was it made a noise but was it from the chest guard or something else?
Generally there would be three referees scoring the fight and the possibility of errors occurring are reduced but as many would know even in this circumstance the corner judges can get it wrong (hence the introduction of electronic body protection scoring).
In saying that there is a valuable lesson that an athlete can learn by being involved in such a competition and that's "ring craft". Ring craft is understanding were the corner judges are positioned and ensuring that when you kick, two of the judges will see it (and not just the one).
I personally have found this a difficult skill to learn because im overly focused on my competitor, rather than the judges who funnily enough have no chance of kicking me in the head!
But in saying that and watching the smart players compete you can see that they move around and position themselves before setting up for their next attack. Brilliant!
I think its therefore important for all the competitors not worry too much about the end result of the fight but to take these little goals into a competition like this and use this environment to learn and practice new skills.
For myself personally it was a good day to be a part of and experience a different side to Taekwondo, one which is often forgotten or taken for granted and to give something back to the future Australian athletes.

Thank you to all the Club coaches, MTC, Team Victoria, volunteers and competitors for a good fun day were in the end Taekwondo in Victoria and Australia benefits.

Cheers,
Steve