Saturday, October 26^th, Day 3 of competition – Team Sparring

It was getting harder and harder each morning to get up early since I was not only physically tired but emotionally drained. Nothing could top the day before.

Team events are always fun at competition and that is why they are held at the end of the tournaments. There isn’t as much pressure as the individual events but you still want don’t want to let down your team. I trained just as hard for my team events as I did for my individual events. Today my event was team sparring and it was a blast. In individual sparring you only compete against people in your weight category. In team sparring you never know who you are up against and the weight categories disappear. I felt a bit of pressure to win my fights after winning the gold in my division. Our first match was against Scotland and I was so proud how we all fought our hearts out. You could tell how badly we wanted it. Our second match was really intense against Germany and we only lost by 1 point which unfortunately took us out of the event. We are still proud though since we lost to the silver medalist so we knew we had good competition. We had such a fun team of girls and we all tried our best. Thanks to Mr. Tran for more great coaching.

Mr. Tran is a great coach and it’s his decision who goes against the other opponents. There is so much more strategy in Team Sparring since there are so many different weight classes

We were so excited to win our first match

We did our best. Love these girls! : Georgina, Abbie, Marie-Pierre, Serena, Emma and me

I felt more relaxed that day and I had the opportunity to go around and talk to different people that I’ve met over the years. I also got the chance to meet some new competitors from Europe that didn’t go to New Zealand but I had heard about them or competed against them this time. It’s amazing how easy it is to talk to people who all have the same passion and goals. I was flattered by a lot of compliments and constructive criticism from my seniors since it gives me more to work on. There are always ways to improve!!!!

At the medal ceremony I went up for my gold medal in patterns from yesterday. This may sound bad but I’m not a person who really gets excited about medals ( I am more proud of the titles themselves) but the podium at a World Championship is different. Listening to the national anthem with a gold medal around your neck gives you Goosebumps.