Sandy Martial Arts Students Bring Home the Gold!

SANDY, Utah - June 24, 2014 - PRLog -- Last weekend 20 students from Personal Mastery Martial Arts went to Colorado for the annual US Open Hanmadang tournament. They spent the last several months preparing for this tournament with team practices several times a week and they were rewarded with a  fantastic team experience and brought home 46 medals! Their families and instructors in the stands could not have been more proud of all of their hard work and positive attitudes as they took the floor and performed.

The Personal Mastery Martial Arts (PMMA) competition team coach, Holly Stirling, said, “As the coach of the PMMA competition team this year, I can personally vouch for the amount of hard work and effort that the entire team put into their training. They all came out and gave it everything they had. Our team left with 46 medals! Every team member had to compete in at least 2 events, and many did even more than that. We are so lucky to have a good variety of talent on our team and we were able to get gold medals in breaking events, weapons, and poomse (forms). I couldn’t be more proud of what we accomplished, and I have no doubt that PMMA will have an even bigger presence at next year’s event!”

The PMMA competition team has been growing bigger each year. This was the 3^rd US Open Hanmadang that they attended. They have also gone to several other large tournaments, including the 2010 World Hanmadang held in Seoul, South Korea where they brought home more gold medals than any other US team. The PMMA competition team takes great pride in always giving their best effort.

One team competitor, Mark Szczepanski, who won a gold medal in breaking said, “I have been training in martial arts for almost 15 years and have been with PMMA since April of 2013, and this was my first martial arts competition. At PMMA we take pride in always giving our best effort, so I set up for my side kick and smashed through a stack of seven 1-inch thick boards! I will always be able to look at that gold medal and take pride in the training and self discipline I invested in preparing for my events and never doubt that I earned it!”

The PMMA team consisted of adults, adolescents, and children. The parents who were watching their children perform at a competition level, many of them for the very first time, could not have been more proud. One parent, Suzy Davie, said, “There are so many lessons learned – hard work, patience, pushing through your fatigue, gracious winning and losing. All the team members exhibited all of these! I am proud of everyone!”

Another parent, Dan Ellingson, said, “We had a great weekend at the Hanmadang! It was Joe’s first competition of any sort. We had a great time watching the team and the other competitors exhibiting their skills. Thank you Personal Mastery Martial Arts for providing the avenue for him to do something he loves in a friendly but competitive arena!”

Overall, the Personal Mastery Martial Arts competition team gave a fantastic performance – all of your friends and family are very proud of you! Congratulations!

For more information about martial arts in Sandy check out www.sandymartialarts.com and www.kidslovemartialartssandy.com