2009 British Tang Soo Do National Championships

Strength on Strength!

17 Students go from Haverhill's Do Jang and Win 32 Medals!

British Tang Soo Do National Championships 2009:

UK Tang Soo (Soo Bahk) Do Federation Moo Duk Kwan

32 National Medals won by Haverhill’s Uk Tang Soo Do Martial Arts Club.

17 Members of the Haverhill Tang Soo Do Korean Martial Arts Club took part with over 350 competitors from all over Great Britain and Ireland at the 31st British National Championships held on the 4th July at Watford in front of the Grand Master Kang UK Lee.

Instructor Kevin Blackwell said “earlier in the year at the regional championships we won 30 medals but the students far exceeded this by winning an unbelievable 32 National medals and bringing home 16 Gold’s, 7 Silvers and 9 Bronze for the students at the Haverhill Do Jang.

Forms event is held in the morning, everyone is grouped by weight age and rank, and a typical group size is around 8 competitors, the student does not know which form they will have to perform, the chief master judge tells them which form to perform. This makes winning any medal that much harder as each competitor must know every form to their grade level and be able to perform it at competition standard at that exact moment.

Fighting event is held in the afternoon; again everyone is grouped by weight age and rank. The fighting event works in tiered system. Each fight is 3 minutes if within the time there is a draw a further minute of fighting takes place, if the scores are still tied, it goes to sudden death first score wins.

The final event of the day was the team fighting, where each region across the country put up five fighters consisting 4 male and 1 female per team. The overall winners was the Cambridgeshire team including one of our assisting instructors Craig Phillips, beating 2 other regions and also the current title holders to win gold and bring home the National Trophy.



It was such a busy weekend, with the club performing a demonstration on the recreation ground in Haverhill the day after the National tournament. A huge well done!”

Well done to everyone that took part. Tang Soo!

Tang Soo Do is a classical martial art.

Its purpose is to develop every aspect of self, in order to create a mature personality who totally integrates his/her intellect, body, emotions and spirit.

This total integration helps to create a person who is free from inner conflict and who can deal with the outside world in a mature, confident, intelligent, forthright, and virtuous manner.

For anyone interested in trying out this Traditional Korean Martial Art of self defence.

The Tang Soo Do Suffolk Class are held at:

Cambridgeshire