On Sunday 2nd April, the Trident Taekwon-Do Academy in Sale played host to the T-UK Umpire Course. The course was run by Master Ridley and Master Miley and saw students coming from all over the North-West to either experience their first Umpire Course or refresh their skills.

We started the day in a classroom setting upstairs at the Academy with Master Ridley running a presentation covering the administration involved in running a square at a tournament. He went over the rules and scoring for patterns and sparring as well as details of the how the warnings work for sparring and what hand signals the Centre Referees should be using for each thing. We had a lot of student participation with some really insightful questions being asked, which really helps everyone to get the most out of these types of courses. There’s so many variables involved that it is impossible to cover all scenarios so it was nice to get an idea of what kinds of things the students were worried about and what they wanted clarification on. Master Miley also provided some valuable insight into some of the qualities that are important to have as a Centre Referee. Whilst we concentrated on how umpiring works at our tournaments we did also highlight some details that are slightly different if attending ITF events.

After a short break outside in the sun for lunch, whilst some of us lamented that there always seems to be nice weather when we run these courses, we changed into doboks and got ready to try out some of the skills we had been talking about in the morning.

We split into two groups with Master Miley taking some of the younger students in one half of the dojang and Master Ridley taking the teens and adults in the other half and we covered the etiquette and procedures for both patterns and sparring and allowed the students to all have a go at seeing what it is like to try and judge patterns. I think a lot of them will have come away with a newfound respect for umpires and the difficult job that they do

We then moved on to sparring and had students taking it in turns at trying out corner judging and centre refereeing, with some play acting involved by the people sparring and some of the audience. Whilst we all had a lot of fun we covered a lot of detail at the same time and I think some of the students who enjoy competing have learned a lot about how to improve their ring craft and use the layout of the ring to their advantage when sparring.

We then came back together as one group to go over the procedures around special technique and destruction before having a final question and answer session to make sure that students had been able to have a chance to ask any questions they needed to and also to give our Masters a chance to test some of the students and see how much they had managed to absorb.

Huge thank you to Master Ridley and Master Miley for running the course and sharing their knowledge with us as well as all the parents and students for coming out and working hard.

Miss Jayne Heywood IV

Publicity Officer for the Northern Region