NCTA Nationals

So, last weekend was NCTA (National Collegiate Taekwondo Association) Nationals at UC Berkeley. Both Micah and Asher's college taekwondo clubs sent teams. Nathan and I flew out and cheered them on. :) 

The tournament, itself, ran Friday thru Sunday, but Asher and Micah only competed on Saturday so we only attended on Saturday. The day started with the demo team competition. CU Boulder went first...

Yes, more than once, they throw Micah in the air so he can break boards. The team did a great job and ended up placing fourth.

Next up was board breaking competition. Competitors had three minutes to break up to 8 boards and were scored based on technical difficulty and presentation. All four members of UNC's team competed in their respective divisions (based on belt and gender) and did a fabulous job. Here's Asher...

He took home the silver!

And then both Micah and Asher competed in sparring. For various reasons (having to do with official/school recognition or something), neither competed as a black belt. Micah (in red in the top two pictures) won his first match but lost his second...

...and Asher (in the blue in the bottom two pictures) didn't make it past his first match. Both boys lost to the person who ultimately won their bracket. It's not the style of sparring either of them grew up with (scoring is different) and we were so proud of their efforts. (Also, quick shoutout to the CU Boulder team for helping out the UNC team! UNC doesn't practice this sparring style nearly as often and didn't have everything they needed. CU helped them borrow enough gear and provided a coach for each of their matches while at the tournament.)

So, that was Saturday. Perhaps more importantly, though, both teams had a great experience together! UNC's team made the 20 hour road trip from Greeley to San Francisco (the three pictures on the left)...brought home three medals in board breaking (each of the four competed in both board breaking and sparring)...and had a blast hanging out in San Francisco--practicing on the beach, riding the cable cars, visiting Chinatown, etc. 

(The rest of the pictures in this post were taken from the clubs' Instagram accounts.)

CU's team flew about 50 team members to San Francisco and then spent pretty much all of their time shuttling between their hotel in Oakland and UC Berkeley...cheering on each other and all the other Colorado teams all three days of the tournament...

I'm unclear on the reasoning but apparently the tournament awarded fourth place finishers (in events other than sparring??) bronze medals alongside the third place finishers...hence the bottom left photo. And that last photo is part of a video highlighting how so many of the CU members lost their voices from all of their yelling at the tournament, lol. 

Many thanks to all who helped either or both of our boys get to Nationals! So thankful they were able to have this experience!

I'll be back later with the rest of our trip...