Spring is here at last!  May is a very exciting Month.  Our annual tournament will be held on Saturday, May 7th.  This is a great tournament and we hope that everyone participates in the competition.  If you take pictures at the tournament, we would love to have a copy of the pictures for the newsletter and website.  If you are available and can volunteer to help during the tournament, please let us know.  Even if you are only able to help out for a couple hours, we can use your help.

Memorial day will be on Monday, May 30th, and we will be closed in recognition of the holiday.  

We also want to let you know that we will be sending out a much shorter Newsletter during the summer: June, July, and August.  The summer newsletter will include our calendar, belt promotions, and perhaps some other key piece of information. 

The school sponsored Tournament is scheduled for May 7th at Fairfield Intermediate School located on Donald Drive.  The tournament will begin at 11:00 am. This is the 5th year our school has sponsored this tournament.  For our students that have thought about competing, but never gotten around to attending a tournament, this is the ideal first tournament.  The fees are reduced for our students and the tournament is located near the studio. If you have questions about participating in the tournament, see David Huffstutler or one of the other black belts.

In addition to participants, we are also looking for volunteers for our tournament.  Volunteers may register online or contact David Huffstutler.

Our tournament is scheduled for Saturday, May 7th.  There will be no classes on Saturday as we prepare for the tournament. 

As a reminder to all the sparring students, no sparring classes are held on the night of Junior Belt Testing.  Parents should expect the Junior Belt Test will be approximately 1 - 1.5 hours long.

The studio will be closed on Memorial Day.  Hello Summer!

The Ahn's Taekwondo Classic is one of the best local area tournaments and very well attended.  Many of our students participated in the tournament and placed in the competition.  The students and their results are listed below.

Hamilton-Fairfield Taekwondo is proud of our students and their scholastic achievements.  We strive to instill not only concepts of physical fitness and spirit, but also a focus and commitment to their school work.  Healthy bodies and healthy minds are important for our juniors as they become working adults.  During the 3rd Quarter, the following students were on Honor Roll.  Students whose names are shown in Bold Red also had straight A's.  If you see these students, please congratulate them on their academic excellence.

I recently received an e-mail from Master Bill Pottle of the Korean Academy of Taekwondo in Colorado.  Master Pottle contributed to our school CDROM by allowing us to re-distribute his article on breaking.  Anyway, when I visited his site I found another wonderful article on sparring.  The article is called Distance: The Donut of Danger.  This excellent article uses images like the one included in this newsletter to discuss sparring distances and techniques.  The article discusses distances such as idle distances, flurry distances, and clinch distances.  For those students that are interested in technical sparring or parents that might want to provide a little basic coaching, the article is a must read.  The article is on the web page for the Korean Academy of Taekwondo

This month's self defense techniques are:

• Self Defense - Hair Pull/Rear Choke
• Self Defense - Breakfalls from shoves

These techniques are very basic and can be viewed on the school computer or found on the school CDROM.

Adult training in grappling based on Jiu-jitsu is offered on Saturday mornings 11:45 am to 12:30 pm.  This month we will be examining a re-direction throw.  The re-direction throw, called the Aikido Throw on our CDROM, is a versatile technique for self defense and grappling.  An entire martial art style, Aikido, exists that makes use of many re-direction techniques.  For our purposes, we learn only a few of these re-direction techniques.  If you are interested in more information on Aikido, you can examine the Cincinnati Aikido Web Site.  Our other technique this month will be a review of our basic defense against the mount from a side mount position.  Because the mount position offers the attacker a powerful position for attacking, we will continue to practice defenses against this position.

Black belt promotions are only made twice a year.  In addition to promotions, students that have achieved the rank of black belt and are seeking to advance to higher ranks are required to credit test.  The students that were awarded a new black belt degree or credit tested are listed in the following tables.

1st Dan Promotions

2nd Dan Promotions