August 2010

Dear Taekwondo Community:

Recently I qualified to represent the United States at the 5th World Poomsae Championships in Tashkent, Uzbekistan along with Masters David Turgeon and Ronald Southwick in the 2nd Male Team Division. Additionally, I qualified with Dr. Kristi George in the 2nd Pair Division. We are all excited and looking forward to representing our country this October.

On Saturday, September 11th, my teammates and I are hosting the Improving Poomsae Performance II seminar. We received excellent feedback on our seminar last spring and several requests for another seminar! You do not have to have attended last spring's seminar to attend this seminar.

With the continued growth of poomsae worldwide, all of us feel an obligation to foster growth and development in this area of Taekwondo. With an annual World Poomsae Championships hosted by the WTF, poomsae competition is exploding. This offers many Taekwondo practitioners an opportunity to set an alternate or additional competitive goal and we are excited to build more participation!

Masters Turgeon and Southwick are excellent presenters of information and have been huge advocates of the development of competition poomsae in the U.S. They have conducted several enjoyable and successful seminars throughout the United States. All of us are eager to share our knowledge and experience with you.

The objective of this seminar is to provide methods to improve overall poomsae performance while introducing the standards and rules of WTF poomsae competition, which have been established internationally for several years and have been implemented in the US. Although this is not an official Poomsae Referee Certification Seminar, it is important for those who aspire to referee poomsae competition attend in order to know and understand poomsae. Master Turgeon, a certified WTF Poomsae IR, will teach a segment of this seminar covering the rules and scoring and what judges look for in performances.

This is not a seminar to tell or show you or your students how to do your/their poomsae at your do-jang. Rather, there is a standard for competition poomsae that will be presented at this seminar. We will demonstrate, review, and practice Tae-Geuk Poomsae and several WTF Black Belt Poomsae based on the WTF standards USED IN COMPETITION.

Our goal is for all participants to leave this seminar with a better understanding of the standards, how to apply them in competition and how to understand judging for this type of competition. We aspire to give others more knowledge in this area and we think that this will serve as a catalyst to further study and participation. It is our belief that with more education and participation, the U.S. will become much stronger and place much higher at future World Championships. I hope you and your students will embrace this opportunity and consider participating in this fun and enjoyable part of Taekwondo!

Please call or email me! I am excited to speak with you and answer questions you may have! I am confident that you will thoroughly enjoy yourself and significantly increase your knowledge base by attending this seminar.

Sincerely,
Master Garth Cooley

May 14, 2010

Dear Taekwondo Community,

I am pleased to announce the dates of Indy Cup 2011!

Please mark your calendar now and plan to attend on Saturday and Sunday, April 16 - 17, 2011!

All Color Belt competition will be held on Saturday, April 16, 2011.

All Black Belt competition will be held on Sunday, April 17, 2011.

Please see our event calendar for other tournament and events in our region as you plan your fall tournament season.

We are close to finalizing tournament results for Indy Cup 2010 and plan to have them posted to our website very soon. Thank you for your continued patience.

Once again, all the best for success at the Nationals and Junior Olympics summer!

Sincerely,
Master Garth Cooley
Director