Gaining experience and the motivation to develop further skills is a key takeaway from participating in the ITF Alberta Provincial Championship for members of the Trinity Taekwon-Do.

On May 11, Trinity sent a team of 26 competitors, ages 5 to adult, and four full-time umpires to the championship in Airdrie. They returned with 36 medals, including eight gold, 11 silver, and 17 bronze in a field of about 350 competitors at Genesis Place in Airdrie.

trinity group shotTrinity Taekwon-Do sent a large contingency to ITF provincials. (photo submitted)

Head coach and Trinity founder Cameron Macdonald says their athletes participated in all the events, including patterns, sparring, specialty breaking, and power breaking.

MaddieMaddie du Toit with a hard-earned gold medal. (photo submitted)

Macdonald says among the highlights was an adult green belt with blue stripe student Maddie du Toit winning some hard-fought battles against some blue belts to come out on top with gold in sparring.

Adult black belt Mark Orcutt, who just earned his black belt in March, won gold in sparring and gold in power breaking. It was his first time competing in the board-breaking event.

ShilohShiloh Snoeij won gold in sparring in her first-ever competition. (photo submitted)

Yellow belt student Shiloh Snoeij won a tough overtime match, then went on to win gold in sparring at her first-ever competition. 

"I was very proud of the performances that I was able to witness, sitting ringside and coaching as many of our students as possible," he says. "I saw great demonstrations of tenacity, grit and perseverance as they battled through hard fought sparring matches, tough patterns matchups and additional challenges in the two board breaking events." 

While Trinity hosts their own inhouse tournaments for both their Cochrane and Water Valley dojangs, competing in provincials helps to boost people's confidence and provides them the motivation to train harder. 

"I've already had parents of students who competed come up to me and say it was a great experience and that they're motivated to learn more and train harder now."

Some of their students get to face new opponents when they travel between Trinity's two dojangs. Macdonald says they have students from Water Valley coming to Cochrane and vice versa to make up for when they have a conflict with another spring sport or a camp.

"I think that motivates people because suddenly they have new training partners, so it's good to have both location dojangs healthy and operating."

Adding new students has that same impact.

"There's always room to grow and we welcome new members to join us. Having new students gives everybody more motivation and extra training partners."

Six Trinity members are competing at the North American Invitational this weekend in Regina.