Emma's First Tournament

This weekend Emma has her first Taekwondo tournament. She is competing in two events: musical weapons and sparring. She has been working for several months, with the help of her instructor, to create a unique floor routine using two pink kamas, which are a hand scythe type of weapon. I was really excited to help her pick out her music for the routine and spent quite a bit of time going through my ipod selections and my cd’s. I was hoping for a sweet rock song with lots of pounding guitars, deep bass rifts, and rhythmic drums. I had settled on a couple of songs by Static-X and the Prodigy; I could picture her in my mind jumping through the air and slicing invisible foes to a really rockin’ soundtrack. Instead, she chose a Hannah Montana song (or is it Miley Cyrus, I always get those two confused!) called “Fly on the Wall”. She has worked really hard on her routine and I am extremely proud of her. Those who know Emma know that she doesn’t have a lot of control over her body and often walks into walls, trips over invisible objects, and falls off chairs for no reason. I am proud of the effort she has put into her Taekwondo forms and weapons training. She really enjoys it and when she is practicing, you can clearly see the joy on her face.

Her other event is sparring. I love watching Emma spar, although sometimes I don’t think she realizes that sparring is preparing her for actual fighting. She began sparring in January of this year and has really done very well…when she remembers to keep her hands up. Its always amazed me that Emma, being a very emotional girl, has not cried once during sparring, and we have seen lots of kids crying while sparring. The first time she sparred, she got kicked in the stomach and fell back several feet, exhaling loudly as the air was knocked out of her lungs. She jumped up and kept fighting without skipping a beat. Another time she was fighting a girl who punched her in the face. She came over to me showing me her mouthpiece and said, “There’s blood in my mouthpiece. That’s awesome!” Emma has only hurt another person once when she kicked a boy and made him cry. It really bothered Emma that she had hurt another person and she told the boy repeatedly that he had done a good job and was a good fighter. She didn’t use a lot of power after that for quite a while because I think she was afraid of hurting someone again. With all that said, I am really worried about her fighting in tournament because she will be fighting someone she doesn’t know, someone who doesn’t know her. I am worried because I feel like the students in her class back off a bit because she is such a sweet girl, or they know her limits and don’t push her hard enough. Her instructors are always telling me what a great fighter she is and how quick she is, but I am afraid she is going to go up against someone who is out for blood. I know it’s silly, I know how much she loves to spar, and I don’t want her to get hit so hard she is either embarrassed or chooses not to do Taekwondo anymore.

I love Emma. She is an amazing child with fantastic talents. She has kept straight A’s all year, she has chosen to be baptized in September (on the 4th), and she has excelled at Taekwondo and sparring. I want to see her happy just like I want to see all my children happy. I just hope I can survive this weekend because I’m a nervous wreck!