Liberty academy hosts martial arts meet

Students, masters compete for awards

By Osei Helper | Manor Ink

Liberty, NY – Hwang Kee was born November 9, 1914 in Jang Dan, in the Kyong Ki Provence of Korea. He began his martial arts journey at the age of seven, being exposed to the traditional Korean martial art Tae Kyun. Hwang Kee would then travel to China in 1936 and begin training in martial arts there. In November 1945, Hwang Kee officially formed the martial arts organization known as Moo Duk Kwan.

Seventy-seven years later, on Saturday, June 12, the same day as the annual Livingston Manor Trout Parade, the 4th Annual Empire State Invitational Championship was held at the Liberty Elementary School. The event was hosted by the Liberty Moo Duk Kwan Academy and its two owners, Ian and Annie Constable. The competition was open to Moo Duk Kwan practitioners from all around the region – even H.C. Hwang, the son of Hwang Kee and current grandmaster of the practice, was in attendance.

The official lineup for all of the participants began around 9:15 a.m. After some introductory remarks, promotions were handed out by the grandmaster. A group warmup session was held after all of the master ranked practitioners moved into a private meeting area. After they returned, the competition officially got underway.

The way the competition worked is that there were groups that would compete against each other separated by belt rank, age, and sometimes gender. The first competition was “forms.” A form is a set formation and order of specific martial techniques and movements. Two contestants at a time perform their form and then are scored individually by five judges. The scorekeeper then removes the highest and lowest scores and adds up everything in between.

The other competition was sparring, which is a controlled form of fighting that seeks not to seriously harm the opponent. This form is known as “point sparring,” where a contestant’s goal is to lightly strike his opponent in a legal area in order to score a point. After a point is scored, the action is reset. Each match goes on for two minutes, and the group functions as a double elimination-style tournament, meaning that the losers of each match went into a separate bracket.

The don divisions, synonymous to black belts, compete at an elevated level and were able to go for the grand championship, which is where the best of the best across the division face off against each other. This sparring is separated by gender at the higher age ranges.

The Empire State Invitational Championship lasted until mid-afternoon, and at its conclusion, four grand championship trophies were awarded.