2011 Kick Off Camp Report from Sunshine Coast Club

Well, here we were again for the third straight year. Exited?  Yes we were! I have made the trip down for every kick-off camp we have had and it is ALWAYS an enjoyable experience. I won’t go through a blow-by-blow description of everything we did on the two day camp; I will leave that for some of the other reports.

I will however recount some of my experiences from the two days. I saw a lot of new things to try at my club on the sunshine coast, the self-defence by Master Daher was, as always effective and innovative. I also got to experience this first hand as I was the attacker for his demonstrations!

The talks we had from our two mystery guests were fantastic and thought provoking. I especially enjoyed watching Trent Hayden talk about his time at the Slovakian open; it was great to see this sort of thing happen as it demonstrates that as a country we are capable of providing world class competitors.

 The sparring sessions with Frans Christenson were fantastic and gave me some excellent drills to take back to the class and really exited me about my classs on Monday night!

The next day was also as fun-packed as the first with a variety of speakers including myself. The beep test was a great indication of what fitness levels we were all at! The final session with master Daher proved, as always, to be exhausting, yet lots of fun at the same time.

All in All I had a fantastic time on the weekend and I could see the look of delight on the faces of the participants. The important message from was that this camp is NOT meant to be Taekwon-do for EVERY session, but it is a chance for the organisation to grow and for students and parents to get to know one another!

I would like to thanks Master Daher firstly for his tireless efforts in improving our organisation, and secondly Mr Abdallah and Mrs Keenan for their not inconsiderable time and effort put into this camp!

 See you all next year!

Gerard Kelly

IV Dan – IL Shim Sunshine Coast