Sweat was dripping from our faces and all we could hear was the ticking of the clock and the screaming of our teachers. We had been only fighting for 2 minutes but because of all the energy we had consumed it felt like we had been fighting for an hour. It was the final round of the Florida National Taekwondo tournament. Many months of training had been put into this competition and all my opponent and I could think of was the advice given to us by our instructors.”When your sparring partner moves in to punch you in the stomach his lead hand side will be open, perform a spin kick to his head while his guard is down.” I was positive that advice like this seemed to be running through my partner’s head because we were fighting back and forth performing the same techniques.

He was up 2 points and I was running out of time to gain the lead. I could see from his uniform that he was from Alabama and there is a rumor that Taekwondo students from Alabama were notorious for the amount of illegal hits they would perform. I remembered from the previous day, that a very close friend of mine had her nose fractured because a student from Alabama had punched her in the nose. I was just hoping that no such illegal hit happened to me because I really wanted to win this fight. I had a minute left on the clock and both the crowd and the judges could make out that we were out of energy. I went in for a punch to his stomach and then it happened. My partner performed a roundhouse kick to the side of my knee and all I could feel was the sudden rush of pain course through my right leg. I fell to the ground thinking to myself, “My leg was definitely broken.”

Why did this happen to me? 4 months of training and hard work all down the drain just because another kid didn’t know how to kick.Months before this fight, I would spend countless hours in my Taekwondo school sparring and perfecting certain kicks that would get me the most points. I had finally found something I was passionate about and I wasn’t going to let a leg pain get in the way of receiving the gold medal. Through all this tension and pain I thought of my teacher’s words, “Never give up Aniket, always think about the time and energy you have spent training, and let that channel your anger to win a fight.” That is exactly what i did.

Because he had performed an illegal hit the score was 4-3, in his favor, and I only had 30 seconds left on the clock. The only challenging part was performing an advanced kick with my injured leg to get the final two points. I noticed through the fight that he would perform all his techniques by first placing his right leg forward. All I had to do was kick him in the head with my injured leg with 15 seconds left. Piece of cake. I avoided all his attacks by wobbling around and waited until I found the right time to hit. At the exact moment he placed his right leg down, I used every last ounce of energy in me to jump and kick him in the head with a roundhouse kick. I land back on my feet and all I hear is my dad cheering from the bleachers and the judges calling time. Even though I injured a ligament in my knee that day, I received a gold medal in sparring at the Taekwondo tournament. I was thrilled that I had received this medal for the countless hours I had practiced.