truth told

last tuesday, the hubby and little big man went for the weigh in at the central gym of the philippine taekwondo association.  this is in preparation for the Interschool Competition in NCR.

incidentally, since he's up for promotion to brown belt soon, the hubby inquired about the little big man's belt status as recorded in the central gym.  he found out that our former coach has never -- read that again -- NEVER submitted records of any of the promotions we have had with him.  which means, technically, the little big man is still... a blue belt?  or whatever belt he was before we joined this coach.


sucks, right?


two other teammates who "broke away" from this coach found the same problem.  one of them who started as a white belt with this coach does not -- read that again -- DOES NOT have a record at all.  which means, he was never submitted as a member of the PTA at all.  the other one who's supposed to be in brown now is only in red.  this only means that our records since more than a year ago were never submitted.

we wonder now what all the rest of his players' status are.  somebody told me it might be because coach is registered in the province.  but more than a year?  does it take that long to transfer records to central gym??  your guess is as good as mine.  

turning a new leaf

last weekend, the little big man's taekwondo coach for more than 2 years literally disowned him.  

we assume he is infuriated by the fact that the hubby helped a co-parent put up his own taekwondo gym and got a different coach.  we actually understand how hurt he must be, considering he's already our coach but our co-parent got somebody else.  but it wasn't for the hubby and i to decide because it wasn't our business. 

i am writing this down to lay down our cards because many facts may have been misunderstood or some people may be saying things that are untrue and i would like the real circumstances not to be left unsaid.

first off, the little big man is enrolled in a school in NCR.  thus, we are letting him train with a NCR coach who, our now former coach endorsed to us last year.  we have informed this to him last year and he knows very well that this is the only way to go because he is based in mecauayan, bulacan and he will never be able to support our son in NCR. (on a side note, last summer, former coach tried to convince hubby and me to transfer the little big man to a school which he handles but we politely declined, believing our son is already placed well in his NCR school.)

coincidentally, our NCR coach's assistant is the one (they say) that former coach is not in good terms with.  and this particular not-in-good-terms coach is the one that our co-parent commissioned to train the students at his new gym.

we did not intentionally tell former coach of this because we knew, for sure, he would not approve of this association with the not-in-good-terms coach.  and basically, business is still business, and the co-parent who put up the gym is entitled to his own choice on who to get for his business.  and he did not want to get former coach.  we did introduce him (our co-parent) to the new coach, yes, because we are friends and friends help each other, right?

turns out, somebody told former coach some misguided information god-knows-what and it seems that he is very unhappy, angry and even hurt by these circumstances.  we understand he may be threatened by new competition.  he may be hurt that he was not the one commissioned by our co-parent.  or he probably thinks we betrayed him.  he may even think of us as ungrateful after everything he's done for our son.  but just as in any school, we pay the school to teach our children and if we decide to move on to a better school, we are not bound because of gratitude. 

for the record, we never intended to leave him because we still consistently trained with him and joined his competitions, supported his endeavors and have always had a high regard and respect for him.

but after what he did to us that fateful sunday, he has closed the door and we do not intend to open it again.   it is sad that he did not talk to us to clear everything and relied only on hearsay -- hearsay from people who probably want to suck-up to him to get on his good side, at our expense.  we can only guess what is going through his mind right now about us but we pretty much have the idea that it is not good.

we are moving on now. we are grateful to him for everything he has done for our son but we will not be controlled in our decisions on what we think will be best for him.  good luck and godspeed, sir.