Great Learning Experience

It took everything in me to not burst out of the stand, run down, and give my child a big hug to console her. Dropping the staff disqualified Taylor from the event. After the tournament one of the judges from Taylor's ring told me that Taylor's staff spinning was beautiful. Had she not dropped the staff she would have taken 1st place.

The Kuk Sool Won Midwest tournament was a great learning experience.

1. Failure builds character.
2. Character building feels really cruddy while it is happening.
3. The definition of "best" is very subjective.
4. Losing gracefully is really, really hard for everyone.
5. It is easy to have good etiquette when you win. It's a much harder exercise when you lose but is something that we must always work at.

Things I had to muster up and say to my child even though all I wanted to do was affirm everything she was feeling about how subjective judging is. I had to take my mom hat off and put my instructor hat on. I know how hard judging is. All of the judges try their best to be as fair as possible. That is all any of us can ask of them. Sometimes judging falls in our favor and sometimes it doesn't. That's competition.

Taylor and I both learned a great deal about ourselves after this tournament. All experiences, regardless of outcome, are good learning experiences. We can't wait take our learnings, apply it to our training the next six months, and compete again in Houston.

BTW, I came home with two golds (forms and technique) and two silvers (staff spinning and sparring). Taylor took home a medal for her 4th place finish in techniques.