We held our annual awards night to celebrate the success of 2018 recently. The evening was spent at the Almondvale Suite, in Livingston’s Football Stadium, with just over 200 of the students, and their families gathering to celebrate.

The evening kicked off with a drinks reception and family photos with Photography by Jason Kimmings. Before a video presentation of the awards nominees and winners, with each of the instructors presenting the awards, alongside our special guests Grand Master MacCallum IX and Mr. A. Chesworth VI. The last presentation was black belt certificates for those who successfully promoted during the past year.

A summary of the awards winners can be found below, alongside the runners up.

Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

A gallery of the official pictures from the evening can be found here

Keep your eyes open – we’ll soon be announcing our 2019 awards evening, giving plenty of notice.

So its been a pretty busy few weeks during February, we hadn’t had time to update the website fully as yet.

We’ve had a first aid course, four competitions, a child protection course, our awards night, different training sessions, and today our Interclub competition. Wow!!

Please bear with us as we catch up with some news items over the next few days. Sorry in advance is we spam your inboxes and social media with our posts!

ITF Scotland held the first of this years Child Protection Courses at the Scottish Martial Arts Centre in Alloa on Sunday 24th February 2019.

The Introductory Course (Level 1), was presented by Mrs. Angela Barrie, ITFS’s Child Protection & Safeguarding Officer. The morning’s course saw the 36 participants work together in a workshop type format, initially discussing what Safeguarding and Child Protection are, with Mrs. Barrie offering information as to the processes of the Child Protection system in Scotland, and the role that Disclosure Scotland, and the PVG Scheme play in keeping our children safe as well as promoting safe practice within our roles as Taekwon-Do instructors.

The participants were split into small working groups, and given a number of scenarios to discuss, and put forward what should be the best practise in each of those situations. This also gave an opportunity for Mrs. Barrie to answer any questions surrounding current legislation and law.

On conclusion of the course, the participants were issued with their certificates valid for the next two years. 

We’d like to thank Mrs. Barrie for her time in presenting todays course, and look forward to the next one in September (date to be confirmed). The next course will cover Safeguarding within Social Media and Internet/Online.

Also thank you to Mr. Paterson and S.M.A.C. for hosting the event.

Pictured alongside the group are GMAC instructors who took part; Mr. John McIlvaney, Mrs. Gillian McIlvaney, Mr. Kieran Cain and Mr. George Russell.

February 24th saw our team of kick boxers attending the WKU Edinburgh Open. Fantastic Performances from everyone, with personal goals set in advance and achieved on the day.

Stephanie Peden – Gold 🥇

Lynne Prowse – Silver 🥈

Anna Levitzka – Bronze 🥉

Ryan Shaw – Bronze 🥉

Brian Dowell – Bronze 🥉

Katie Drummond Amazing Performance!!! Just Missed out on the Bronze Medal

Coaches are all proud and blown away by the team work!!

The instructors attended a Surprise event for Grand Master MacCallum soon 16th February. The event was organised by Mr. Condie in honour of Grand Master MacCallum’s 50th year in Taekwon-Do. A huge milestone!

There was some sneaky covert operations to keep everything under wraps, with Mr. McIlvaney taking a rather strange detour to get “petrol”, whilst Mrs. McIlvaney stealthily collected Mrs. MacCallum before the evenings celebrations. This took the form of a very entertaining “This is Your Life” presentation from his son Struan, and a short question and answer session, and celebratory meal.

It was a pleasure to attend the evening event, which also attracted a number of Masters from Scotland, England as well as Grand Master Weiller from Germany attending.

Mr. Munro Sir taught a self-defence seminar at our Uddingston gym on 17th February. This session was an additional training session primarily aimed at those preparing for their black belt grading in April, but also open to those wishing to increase their knowledge in unarmed, and armed close quarters combat.

A small team of four of our Livingston kick boxers attended the WKA Scottish Kickboxing Championships at Ravenscraig Regional Sports Facility in Motherwell on Saturday 9th February.

Stephanie Peden🥇LC
Jaimie Singleton 🥈PF🥉LC
Steven Mair 🥉LC
Oliwia Łoza 🥉LC

Was great to see many of our Kickboxers turning up to wish their team mates all the best during the event too.

Our instructors recently completed a three year Sports First Aid Course, alongside our friends from Scotia TKD, Broxburn Blackbelt Academy & Chesworth TKD. This was hosted at our Livingston gym on Sunday 3rd February. We’d like to thank Mr. Robert Mitchell and his company SEMS for taking us through the course, which keeps us up to date with our qualifications for the next three years.