On my way to the taekwondo room on the second floor of a nice tall business building on  duke street my mom was trying to encourage me and she said “Just try your best”.  I had figured that I would have to spar with someone because I had to bring my gear but I just didn’t know who was the problem and they could’ve been stronger than me which was a really big problem for me.  I had thought that if my opponent is a strong guy I knew from there than I was going to lose for sure and not get my black belt.  When I got in the room, the floor was a nice blue mat with red in the middle like it always is accept I saw someone new but I had thought that he was someone from the other classes from the younger kids because I took older kids on mondays, wednesdays, and on fridays, and classes with adults on tuesdays and thursdays with my friends and my master calls us the three amigos.  When the masters came they said that I had to spar the new guy that I didn’t see before which I was maybe going to lose but I didn’t know how strong he was. They said that he took karate which was different from taekwondo and  think is a little tougher so I thought I was going to be creamed for sure and it was also about to start.

I had thought in my mind “If he is from somewhere else, than he could be tougher than me”.  When the match started I already new that I was on the menu of being on the try again for your black belt list but I tried to concentrate on his not so armored body with no mask on his helmet and less armor than me which what I had was a chestplate, a helmet with a mask on it, a teeth guard, knee pads, foot pads, and gloves.  I was trying to get some good hits on his thin I think brown body. There was just one problem that was effecting the win for my belt.  I was not dodging any of his hard tough hits from his strong hands and it was like “ bam, pow, boom”, because I’m more of a hitter and less of a dodger.  I wasn’t going down without enough hits on me and until I got that completely dark black belt so I kept going.  He was getting so many hits on me and I felt like”bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam”, in my mind I thought “ If this keeps on going”, ”bam, bam, bam”, “I might give up and fail and not get that belt”, ”bam, bam, bam”, ”That I worked my butt off for”.  I had wished that “If only I could knock him down”, “bam, bam, bam”, than I would get the advantage” in my mind.

It was a little after but I was more down”bam, bam, bam”, on energy that i needed to stay up and still was wishing that if I could give him a big punch so I could get an advantage and at that time I did give him a pack of a punch and it felt like”POW”, and it felt it also felt like all in one”POW, BAM, BOOM, SMACK in the face” it was really hard core so it would almost knock him down but I took a lot of his energy so I could catch up and that punch really felt like it would really hurt someone with no armor and was tough.  I had caught  up with some energy but I was still low on mine so I could go down on the hard yet a little bit bouncy floor.  I knew that if i had done that hard hit on his brown face or somewhere where there is armor, I could win the match.  It was kind of a one time thing with that hard hit.  It was a one time thing because I tried to do it again but harder and tougher so I could get a higher advantage accept I kind of failed.

I still got some good hits”bam bam bam” but I was getting hits on me.  It wasn’t long until the match ended.  Everyone was cheering for me and they were all like”WOOOO MAX GO WOOOO MAX GO WOOO MAX YOU CAN DO IT” or something like that.  I couldn’t let them down.  I just tried to stay up and just get as many hits as I could.

Once the match was over I was tired enough that i couldn’t  go on.  the good part about that was that I passed. I was so grateful  for my masters teaching me the techniques that led me to this point.  I was really happy and my mom was too.  the rest of the test before this was really hard like 50 push ups(which I’m not that good at) and other sparing(which I’m somewhat good at depending on my partner) but it was all worth it.