Wushu Competition 2009

This year, WY was entered for the Wushu Competition for 南拳 which was an 'individual' assessment. The Competition was held at Tao Nan School.



The wait for WY's item took a long long time. We could see that WY and his team members were already tired out from the long wait. We ourselves were also quite 'sian' standing, then sitting, around.

After a long while, WY and his team mates finally changed into their costumes. But it's weird that the coach did not get them to do some warm-up exercises etc. They all just continued to sit around in their cluster.

R and I tried to cajoule WY to do at least some stretching along the corridor outside the hall. He got up reluctantly, and to his greater dismay, I asked for a few photo shots. See the unwillingness in his expression?



Everyone in the hall had their eyes fixated on the contestants in the courts. There were 2 courts that day. During our stay, the contestants were mostly being assessed in 拳: 南拳、长拳、舞拳 and 长枪 (only younger children for this).

Some contestants were really quite good. They had the '劲' and powerful strikes most of the time. So these performances kept us entertained. But others, including WY, had vast room for improvement. Mostly, they did not have the 'force' - 劲 in their strikes.

We learnt that the contestants were required to complete their set in a given time; if they finished before the time, they would be penalised ('insufficient time'). Other penalties we observed that afternoon were 'starting position incorrect', 'ending position incorrect', 'incomplete steps' and 'incorrect steps'. There were even 2-3 contestants who gave up midway because they couldn't remember their strokes. No score was given for such 'give-ups'.

As we waited for WY to come on, I told R that WY had not been practising very much this year. In fact, he had found out all the 南拳strokes only about 2-3 weeks ago, right? And we never ever saw him practise even once at home.

Anyway, we think he put on his best performance he could manage that day. But WY was disappointed at his score of 6+ points although personally, I think it was quite a commendable achievement.

To cheer him up a little, we bought him a snack as we went to KHS to pick WF up. In the car, R suggested to WY that he should now 'teach' R the 南拳 set, so that both father and son can practise and master it together. (So far, I haven't seen this materialise yet - the morning stretching exercises that they are both supposed to do, haven't been really regular yet.)