National Inter-school Wushu Championships- Day 5

After an intensive week of competition, the boys still met up with me on Sat for practice from 10am to 3.30pm. They've been working hard and the efforts are paying off.

Jeconiah Tan How Ruan from Sec 1F scored first-blood for VS today and achieved his hat-trick in this Championship by getting his third individual medal for VS in the C-Div Nan Gun.

With his vigourous performance, Jec mangaged to achieve a Bronze in 3rd place-- just narrowly losing out to the second place athlete by 0.01 point.

In B-Div, Fung Jin Jie from Sec 4B dominated his event, the B-Div Broadsword 2nd International Routine with a score of 8.66, 0.5pts higher than his closest competitor, to come in first with his second Gold medal for VS:


However, it was the Taiji duo of Samuel Tan and Ho Mun Yong, both from 2B that continued to establish our strong hold in the Taiji events. In the C-Div 42-step Taiji Sword, Ho Mun Yong took a Gold in first place with Samuel Tan coming in a close second for the Silver:


Our B-Div boys also competed in the same event, the 42-step Taiji. Ang Kang Jie from Sec 3C showed his progress in taiji compared to his performance in Sec 2. With his score, he was able to hold on to 4th position for a moment, however the seasoned veterans in this event soon over took him.

However, Kangjie remained undaunted and was the first student to return back to school to join his school mates back in training. A fitting example of how our incoming Vice-Captain should behave- Kangjie leads by example. Well done!

The intense competition was enlightened by John Png from Sec 3B. Participating in the same event as Kang Jie, John stunned all of us with his marked improvement- especially since he had just completed his routine.
What stunned the entire crowd of audience, judges and fellow competitors was John's total immersion in his routine until he stepped right out of the performing area.
(You can hear my scream of anguish at 2.19 kekeke)

It was obviously mix up in direction and confusion in routine; but wait... there's more!
This is where John showed the true Victorian spirit of 'Never Say Die'
Despite an error in direction and stepping out of the performance carpet entirely (an incident I have never ever seen before in any Taiji event-- and something which I doubt any of the judges have too!), John kept his cool composure and continued his routine calmly and managed to finish his routine and reface the correct direction!
(See clip at 3.01)
I couldn't help but smile as I watched this episode :P and indeed, while 2 wrongs don't make a right, in John's case negative x negative got him a positive.

And I guess that is the lesson worth learning for all of our boys training wushu- in life, we are bound to make mistakes and step out of line. Some of our mistakes may even be unthinkable and unexpected; but it is the ability to find your way back that makes a man out of you.
So if I may wax philosophical here, let us realise that often in life,"the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... but time and chance happeneth to them all."

So In Other Words..... none of you athletes control the score that you get on the carpet; but for that brief minute or so, you control the time, the space and the attention of everyone there. It is how your use that time, that space and the attention that everyone has on you that gives your wushu training purpose and value.

The medals, well... they are just (im)material.