kayla wong
1st poom | september 2023

Hello to everyone who is here at my black belt grading. When I first started taekwondo, I was a short and chubby girl. Ever since I was young, I had always wanted to be able to do those cool kicks and punches. I tried many martial arts before, but I never really learnt anything. That was when I started taekwondo at Weiwu Taekwondo in Mitcham. I remember the first time I walked into the hall I was nervous, but as soon as I walked in, I was welcomed by Master Joyce which made me feel a lot more confident. The first thing I learnt was self-defence. I remember struggling with it, but Master Bryanna helped me and soon I was able to move onto more advanced self-defence.

When I graded to yellow 1, I also started FAST, I could not keep up and did not want to continue doing it because it was too hard, and I didn’t like moving. But when I saw the Warriors doing speed kicking and doing all those other kicking drills, it gave me motivation to keep on going. Because of FAST, I can now move a lot faster than before. A few months later I started warriors. I was scared I wouldn’t be able to keep up with all those black belts, but as I kept trying, and with the master’s help, I was able to get to where I am today.

I competed in my very first competition as a yellow belt with Master Benecia as my coach. I don’t really remember that competition, but something that I will never forget is having an opponent that towered over me, and even now it is something we still laugh about. But the funniest thing that has happened at a competition was me flopping to the ground at Gold Coast Open. These experiences are things that I will never forget and have changed my life. I hope to be able to compete in more competitions and my main goal is to not fall in a fight, which I think will be impossible since I have a magnetic bum.

I want to thank Master Brian for teaching my first blocks and strikes, my self-defence and making sure that I understand what I’m doing.

Thank you, Master Joyce, for teaching me my patterns and teaching me the proper stances and techniques and organising so many things for us.

Thank you to Master Benecia for coaching me at my comps, teaching me different sparring drills, helping me find kicks that I will be able to do and helping me improve on kicks so I can do better in my comps.

Thank you to Master Bryanna for driving me to comps, making me laugh because of how stupid look when I kick, helping me learn the rules of sparring and making sure I that I’m my doing my kicking drills correctly and correcting me.

Thank you to my amazing sister for driving me to many of my classes, only because she wanted to get her driving hours up, and for helping me edit my speech to make it perfect (she made me write this).

Lastly, I want to thank my parents for also driving me and for giving me this opportunity to do something I love even though I can look like I hate it sometimes.
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I hope to be able to keep doing this and to be able to go to more competitions. Now that I have started my taekwondo journey, I have found something I love, which is the floor, but I am excited to continue my journey and learn new things.