Students from the Professional Black Belt Academy of Hot Springs competed at the World Taekwondo Alliance's Winter Nationals in Plano, Texas, and had success at the competition, despite it being many students' first time to compete.
The academy starts training students at 4 years old, but Professional Black Belt Academy of Hot Springs owner and chief instructor Fred Green took students from the ages of 8 to 18 years old to compete at nationals.
"We did very well," Green said. "We had a lot of first timers. So same thing happened to me when I first started martial arts. My first tournament to go to was the nationals here in Hot Springs for Taekwondo America, so it's really exciting when your first tournament is a national."
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There were many different types of events for students to compete in at nationals.
One way students could compete was by doing patterns or forms known as katas. During the katas, students show off a sequence of moves and illustrate how techniques are put together.
The events did not end at just katas, and students could compete in a variety of events depending on their skill level.
"If you're not high enough ranked, you do what's called one-steps, where you show your moves against somebody but make no contact," Green said. "You have point sparing which is when it's basically like a game of tag. As soon as you tag somebody in a certain target area, above the belt of course, you get a point or two points or three points depending on what kind of technique you use."
Students could also participate in continuous sparring which Green said comes from the Olympics.
"That's sort of like tennis, more or less, they're going back and forth," he said. "You're just counting points as they go until a certain time span. ... There was also a board breaking division, so your age, your weight, they go by that and whoever can break the most boards."
There are different organziations revolving around Taekwondo and the different organizations can host their own events. The Professional Black Belt Academy of Hot Springs got invited to Winter Nationals by the WTA.
Leading up to nationals, Green did not really know how his students would do in the competitions because the coronavirus made so many things uncertain. Not only did Green have many newcomers, but he had students that had not competed for a year at the least.
"We had the UTA (United Taekwondo Alliance) nationals in July of last year and that was our, you know, our first competition since COVID had started," Green said. "I had a lot of guys and young ladies do wonderful jobs there. So I just really -- you never know what's going to happen. So we didn't gear up for it like we usually do because we were invited, you know, fairly quickly."
Heading into nationals, Green did not know how many students he would have competing.
"I was very proud of our turnout, and I was very proud of how many new students we had because tournaments, like anything else, can be very intimidating," he said. "Tournaments can be very intimidating. And you just never know how someone's going to act. It's one of the great things about tournaments is it's as close as you get to being in an actual combative situation without hurting somebody."
Perhaps the biggest challenge Green faced heading into nationals was he would have to break one of his biggest rules.
"I have an unwritten rule that I've always followed my whole 30 years in martial arts, and that is I will never let my kids go to a tournament without me," he said. "And unfortunately, a couple of days before the tournament I was diagnosed with COVID, and so the whole day I was quarantined."
While Green's students were competing at nationals, he was stuck inside a camper with his dog.
However, Green was constantly receiving text messages about how his students were doing and where they placed in the competitions.
"So it internally killed me," he said. "I mean, I was glad that everybody was keeping me in the loop and letting me know what was going on. But I feel as if though I was letting all my students down."
To prepare for nationals, Green worked with his students on the finer, more traditional details that really needed to be fine-tuned for competitions.
"So when we come to a tournament time, the only thing I do, honestly, mainly is work on attention to detail," he said. "Things that they wouldn't need against a bully in school, things that are more for instance the way their foot is aimed for a certain stance or making sure they have enough weight distribution on a certain part or which way, so on and so forth."
Even with all the challenges, Green said he was impressed with the overall performance of his students. While he did not single out any one performance or high finish, he again noted the amount of inexperience he took into the event.
"Honestly, I was very impressed with all of them because like I said I had a lot of beginners," Green said. "And when I say beginners they were intermediate ranks, but they'd never been to a tournament a day in their life. ... But once again, if you're sitting on the couch, your chances of winning a medal are 0%. So them being out there competing, whether they got a place or didn't get a place, I was proud of each and every one of them."