President's Welcome Speech

East London Taekwondo Club President, Sarah Gould, welcomes new and returning members for 2019/2020. Please take the time to read below.

Hi there everyone!

A very warm welcome to our members, returning and new, for the beginning of another year of kicking, punching, stretching, falling, laughing, and shouting!

I hope you have all had a lovely time so far, and the start of term has gone smoothly. So far, we have seen loads of new members make amazing progress already – in addition to that for the first time, we have staff from University of East London, join us alongside students and alumni. It is wonderful that we are able to be inclusive like this and share the opportunities Taekwondo offer.

We have recently had our first social (back on 1st November 2019), where we had an absolute blast with nerf guns (thank you Stephen!), Mario kart, Cards Against Humanity and had fantastic company. I really feel like a lot of us bonded over that evening, and I hope we can make it a more regular thing – whether we book a room out or venture off campus to try something like ice skating. I genuinely feel we already have such a wonderful and supportive team building for the year ahead.

Last year, we saw bronze, silver, and gold medals proudly taken home by our team, after months of dedication and hard work, all underpinned by support and faith from everyone here.

We also saw some of our friends finally earn their black belts! Now the next step of their Taekwondo journey can be shared with us this year, as we can watch them begin progression towards higher grades (for those of you who are new here, we call these black belt grades "Dan grades"). For the rest of us, we can continue along the first leg of our journey; one of our new black belts has now taken on a whole new adventure, skateboarding! They were spurred on by the elation that came with earning their black belt, and inspired by our other skateboarding Taekwondoers.

Everyone has something different they would like to take from Taekwondo.

I have learned magnificent things from my time here so far. The most heart-warming of all, is that there is no place for prejudice or hostility here; you can come from any background, with any level of athletic ability (as clearly demonstrated by the clumsiness that is me), and be accepted just as you are. The nurturing and inspiration, rooted within this beautiful martial art, is certain to drive you towards setting and achieving goals you may not have initially believed you could do.

I hope over the course of this year, we will get to know all of you wonderful newcomers, and you will join in with many of our antics throughout the seasons. We will be sure to have a year packed with socials, laughter, new friendships, personal growth, competitions for those of you who are interested in competing, and puns.

To heavily paraphrase Bruce Lee:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who can tell 10,000 puns."

I look forward to spending Tuesday and Thursday evenings with all of you for the foreseeable future!

Kind wishes,

Sarah

-END-