The 2012 UKITF Team Challenge took place at teh Olympiad Leisure Centre, Chippenham and SGTKD joined 9 teams from around the country to take part.


This event is a great opportunity for those who normally are used to competing as individuals to work as a team and the camaraderie on the day was evident. It was also good to see members of different clubs (such as Billy from SGTKD, Josh from Ga-Jok and Brad from Scotland) join together to make up teams so everyone could take part.


Patterns got underway promptly and Megan, Lucie and Esme earnt silver to get the first medal for SGTKD. The boys soon followed with silver for Ben C, Kieran and Ollie and gold for Joseph, Ben BA and Callum. This was a real achievement as Callum had only been awarded his first degree black belt three weeks earlier. Phoebe, Rae-Ann and Chloe earnt bronze and the "old" ladies Renitha, Sarah and Laura got silver.


The timetable of events on the screen kept everyone up to date about where to be and when, and eager eyes continually scanned the scoreboard to see how the clubs were doing.


You could see by the interaction between the teams during the breaks in competing that everyone was enjoying themselves and this continued through the sparring. There were some obvious differences in sizes between the teams but that didn''t put them off giving their all and many showed great technique to gain the points without infliccting too much pain! Once the competiveness was over it was straight back to friendly banter both within and between clubs.


Special technique finished the day off and after a close event Joseph, Callum and Ben BA came away with the gold.


All the SGTKD teams worked hard and in total we left the competition with 11 golds, 12 silvers and 9 bronzes.


Well done to Gassors TKD for a great result and being awarded top club at last!


As always the day would not have gone as smoothly or as swiftly without good oraganisation so many thanks to Miss Burridge, Alison, Master Nicholls, Salli, Glyn and all the officials whose help was invaluable.


We now have a year to come up with our new team names for next year so see you then!