Promoted to 4th Dan

In January 2020, Grandmaster Pat Weseman promoted me to 4th degree black belt in Taekwondo. I almost did not make it to this milestone.

In May 2014, I was running my own school plus teaching at Willow Martial Arts, the TKD  school I attended since July 2000, and for a year, 1996-1997. While I did not realize it at the time, I had burnt out with all the training and teaching. I left Willow Martial Arts and closed my own school the same month.

For the first two months, I did not train at all in martial arts. I used to complete at least one martial arts workout a week. I did not train at all for the first two months. I only lifted weights and performed cardio.

In September 2014, my oldest son Trey told me that he wanted to restart the program at our church. Trey intended to lead the classes. I was only going to help him out.

We started teaching on Monday nights. Trey decided in May 2015 that we should shut down the classes. Before that happened, one of the Willow students preparing for their black belt test contacted me and asked if I would work with her at our school.

We started working on Monday nights for about a month. She casually mentioned that Grandmaster Weseman had invited me to one of the classes. I went back to Willow a week later and have been there ever since. I slowly started taking on more responsibility to prevent burning out again.

Over the course of 2019, I completed my 4th Dan project of creating training video tutorials for all the below black belt forms. Grandmaster Weseman put them on our Willow Martial Arts website for all the students.

I am not sure yet what I want to accomplish for 5th Dan or if I will even test for a higher rank. Time will tell.