#26: President’s Statement At The 2024 AGM

Dear Members, good evening.

On behalf of the Executive Committee of the Malta Taekwondo Association, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Ms. Johanna Grech, Mr. Kevin Azzopardi from the Maltese Olympic Committee, our newly WT appointed moderator Mr Kristóf Szucs and our advisor on Taekwondo matters, Mr Michael MC Kenzie as well as to you all members.

Having two people sent by our governing bodies to safeguard our community is a message that we need to continue learning from our experiences and to continue working together to improve the standard of our sport. The two gentlemen will address this General Assembly as soon as we get through the next item on the agenda which will feature an application that is going to be free for all our members.

A further feature to be introduced soon for the benefit of us all, is a new programme enabling all our members to have easy access for payments of memberships and events in addition to our own Simply Compete portal where each athlete has access to register and renew licenses.

Since the birth of the Malta Taekwondo Association, our sport has continued to grow at an extraordinary pace, and I will now review some of the key happenings of 2023.

After an invitation by the organisers, we started off 2023 with seven athletes participating in a training camp in Athens. This was conducted by Mahroo Komrani.

A week upon returning our Continental President invited me and Alycia Cassar again to Athens. This gave the athlete a chance to undergo training at the top club Dephni run by Olympic Champion Mihhail Mouritsos. Alycia was chosen based on her performance in the Europeans which was held in Malta and the report of Coach Mahroo Komrani.

Still in January, the AIPS President, Mr Charles Camenzuli and ETU Media President, Ms Effie Zikouli, discussed the structure of the partnership of both parties. This was due after an MOU was signed by me and MTA’s general secretary during the European Championships which were held in Malta in 2022.

In the beginning of February, thanks to the initiative of ITL we held our first local training camp at Labranda. It was a huge success amongst our local members. Thanks to the cooperation between the Maltese Olympic Committee and MTA, the sessions during this camp were also live streamed with a running commentary through the Lovin Malta website.

This was followed with our participation in the Turkish open. Unfortunately, this was marred by earthquakes around Turkey and its neighbouring countries where thousands lost their lives. Notwithstanding this the Turkish Federation still managed the championship well and Alycia Cassar returned home with a bronze medal. The Turkish Presidency also showed its appreciation to our work by presenting us with a medal.

Our flight back home was delayed, but we made use of these waiting hours and attended training sessions with one of Turkey’s top coaches Cagri Kizil and Bulgarian national coach Farzad Zolghadari.

During this time Michela Scerri reached the quarter final in her nomination for Athlete of the Year and I made it to the final as Official of the Year – both of us for the second consecutive year.

We are proud to announce that for this year, Taekwondo in Malta has received four nominations. I believe this is one of the highest in one sport. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all contenders the very best of luck. We were also invited to include Taekwondo in the celebration of sport which will be the opening ceremony for this major sport event. Three athletes from Dragon Taekwondo and one athlete from BTC will be part of this celebration which will be televised live on the 2nd of March.

In March last year, National Team athletes Alycia Cassar and Michela Scerri both represented their club ITL in the Belgium open where after a great performance they reached the quarter finals. Dragon Taekwondo also had three athletes representing them during this championship.

As from the same month, the MTA introduced monthly test matches between the athletes from the three clubs.

Staying in March, an agreement was signed between myself, as MTA president, and Dr Chungwon Choue, Chairman of the Taekwondo Humanitarian Foundation. This paved way for two athletes to be able to start achieving their dreams.

In April we invited the Coach of Iran National team to conduct a training camp locally. Hadi Mostaan, does not need an introduction and, during this camp, he showed his expertise, professionalism and willingness to help our local athletes both young and old and in their development.

National athletes together with Coach Ditmir participated in Albania, the 10th Tirana open with Michela Scerri and Alycia Cassar bagging a gold medal each.  Luke Chircop and Nathan Degiorgio from Dragon also participated in Albania bringing home a silver medal each whilst coach Ditmir was presented with a lifetime achievement award for his career in the sport.

During the month of May our national team athletes, Michela Scerri and Alycia Cassar together with THF athlete Mamadou Balde travelled with other athletes from their club ITL to participate in the Asterix E1 in Serbia where Michela and Mamadou returned home with a bronze medal. The rest of ITL athletes returned home with another three medals, 1 Gold, 1 Silver and another Bronze.

In May, the General Secretary and I travelled to Baku to take part in the 50th Anniversary of World Taekwondo. During this event we held several important meetings, the main ones being with Kukkiwon President Lee Dong Sup, FFTDA President Sodok to discuss Humanitarian Aid and with Paralympic chairman Dr Hadwah.

In June, three students achieved new black belt status. Michela Scerri and Jean Schembri from ITL, 1st and 2nd Poom respectively and Glenn Galea from Dragon Taekwondo his first Dan.

In the same month, two athletes participated in the Solidarity Games in Montargis where Michela bagged a silver and Aly a bronze medal. Both girls showed an impressive performance.

The anticipated training camp with Steven Turner was held in August. During this camp Turner focused on many technical elements of the modern game. Coach Steven brought over with him a group of young British athletes.

In September Michela Scerri bagged a silver medal in the Albanian G1. Jean Schembri from the Development team also bagged a silver during this championship. During this tournament we were invited to attend sessions by Villaznia head coach Master Elion, and I had the opportunity to meet the President of the Albanian Olympic Committee and the Albanian Minister of Sport Mr Endrit Hoxha.

During this same month, Nathan Degiorgio from Dragon Taekwondo placed second and bagged a silver medal in Serbia.

In October 2023 we left for Belgrade to attend the kids and cadets Open European Championships. It was a first for Malta to participate with kids. Emma Law Lautier and Dwayne Micallef were making their debut on the continental stage.

For the first time in history these two athletes returned home as European Champion for Dwayne and Vice European Champion Emma. Our three cadets – Michela, Alycia and Nathan – all reached the semi-final stages of the tournament.

In November, the three national team athletes together with THF athlete Mamadou next participated in the Swedish open returning home with a bronze medal for Michela Scerri, silver for Nathan Degiorgio and Gold for Alycia Cassar.

Our congratulations extend also to all athletes who participated in the Brussels open in November with their club ITL. Kieran Vella, Michela Scerri and Gianluca Barbara won Gold in their categories while Dwayne Micallef won bronze.

December was a very busy month for us starting with the MOC Sports Awards where Michela Scerri and Alycia Cassar were awarded for their achievements throughout the year.

We then organised the second training camp for the year which was again conducted by Steven Turner and ended up the year’s activities with the National Open which was held at the Mediterranean College of Sport.

Athletes from the local clubs were joined by those from three Italian clubs and one French club for a total number of 62 participants in categories for Kids, Cadets, Juniors, Seniors and Masters.

We congratulate all the athletes who won gold medals (6 ITL, 4 TLV, 3 Invictus, 3 Brindisi, 2 Di Lauro). With the kind assistance of the FITA President, we made it possible to organize a top National Open which included the presence of an ETU Technical Delegate and International Referees.

Throughout 2023 we held various other events together with The Maltese Olympic Committee and Sport Malta. We thank both these local governing bodies for their support.

As we thank local and foreign media is promoting us and continuously congratulating us for our achievements.

I am proud to say that we, as an Association, are very well respected within the Taekwondo Family and many want to be part of our small association. Of course, I am not alone, and I have saved my final thanks to the Executive Committee, Andre, Michelle and Joanna who as a team have worked incredibly hard these past years. Thank you to our outgoing treasurer, Lucienne – we wish you all the best of success in all that you do. We welcome our new treasurer Johann Cassar. I am sure we will continue to work as a team in the coming years.

To all our volunteers and support team, you are all incredibly amazing. I thank you all for the incredible support.

And of course, our moderator, William Beck. Thanks to him Taekwondo in Malta has moved in the right direction. William has become a mentor and a dear friend to us all. World Taekwondo has shown great appreciation towards Mr Beck’s valuable work, and we could not agree more. Thank you so much William.

Starting from this year we will start to give awards annually to anyone contributing towards our Association and our Sport. This year we hand out two such awards:

The first to our National Team coach, Ditmir Vodinaj. Special thank you to you for your patience, help and dedication.

Gianluca Barbara for your vision with the THF team; for promoting Taekwondo in Schools together with other coaches; for introducing young kids to Taekwondo competitions bringing back last year a European and vice European champions and for giving us the possibility to make use of your premises in almost all events saving the Association money.

I would also like to thank Kwon for sponsoring our National Team, Madame Christine, FITA and FFTDA. Our Technical Board including Master Neville Desira who is always there to help as well as Grand Master Ali Reza – we hope to see you again on our shores to share your knowledge.

Thank you to our Taekwondo Family where our circle is getting bigger and bigger helping us with our vision for this year.

An additional appreciation is due to coach Mauro for finally taking the initiative to take athletes from his club to compete. This has given your athletes the confidence to start participating in bigger competitions and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you the best of luck for 2024 too as I know you have already prepared a programme of events.

To all coaches and athletes, we would like to wish you all every success for 2024. I know you will all dedicate your time and energy to meet your potential and you will continue to make us and your supporting team and families proud.

During these last days, I received calls from both the World and Continental Presidents as well as both secretary generals to congratulate me on becoming a president for the next term and recognising the work we as an executive committee have done on developing the sport.

On this note I must emphasise as I do every year that if we have cooperation and the same passion from everyone our success will be even bigger – our door is always open for those who want to give a helping hand in developing our sport.