San Taekwondo is keeping busy in 2024
By Kirra Livingstone
SAN Taekwondo is gearing up to have a huge year, after winning Taekwondo community club of the year in 2023.
January started off with a bang, with senior athlete Charlie Bidgood taking part in a national training camp in Canberra.
Despite the event’s costs, both athletes’ travel and expenses for the program were funded by Australian Taekwondo.
San Taekwondo owner, Cameron Taylor, said it was a welcome opportunity for Charlie to go down to the Australia Institute of Sport in January.
“That was a great experience which was well supported this year by the national body, so Australian Taekwondo funded that completely for him,” he said.
“He was there for a week and that was really great for him to receive that support.”
Another athlete, 13-year-old Kaitlyn, attended a training camp in Sydney, learning with a Taekwondo club from Thailand and competing against athletes from across Australia.
“This was great for her so she came back with lots of enthusiasm and it was a very hard camp,” he said.
“They had a three hour training session in the morning and then another two hour training session in the afternoon for five days.”
The competitive San Taekwondo team also competed at the Bundaberg Open on February 3-4, which was their first competition of the year.
“The team went really well, I think we had a win rate above 70 per cent which is great for us,” he said.
“Maverick was probably the stand out of the day, he’s just moved up into the open aged division and had to fight a 29-year-old, which he won which is great.
“Kaitlyn had a lot of confidence after her camp and she won very easily too for her fight which was a good result for her.”
He added by saying it was beneficial for his athletes to compete against athletes from clubs up north to broaden their experience.
Cameron said the club was looking forward to the upcoming events this year, and were focused on the Sunshine Coast Open in March, and the States and Nationals later in the year.
The club also currently has 50 students on trial so far, with an overall increase in sign ons compared to last year. “This is kind of huge for us, we’ve got a really big increase in membership from last year which is really great, because we were down a little bit through last year,” he said.
“We dropped down from 170 at the start of last year by 35, and then this year we are looking really strong and we are back to normal numbers.”