Rose Ramsarran getting ready to represent Canada at World Taekwondo competition

July 2, 2014 · 0 Comments

By Bill Rea
A Mayfield Secondary School student has earned the right to represent Canada at the World Taekwondo competition in Mexico later this year, and her family is helping her drum up support for the effort.
Rose Ramsarran, 15, competes at the National level in Taekwondo Poomsae, which is the patterns component of this sport.
She won gold in her Junior division at the Canadian National competition in May in Toronto, capping off a season which saw her take silver at the Canada Open and bronze at the U.S. Open Taekwondo Championships
The world competition will be taking place in late October. She will be competing individually and as part of a team of three.
Rose, who’s been doing Taekwondo since November 2009, trains at Mudo Academy in Brampton. Her mates in the team competition will be Alissa Juman, of Master Seung’s Taekwondo (Argentia) in Mississauga and Maria Alvie Dela Cruz of Ron Rose Taekwondo in Scarborough.
She said she got involved in the sport almost by accident. She and her family had been shopping in a Staples store when they were approached by a Master Heune.
“He just approached us,” Rose’s father Patrick said. “We took him up on it.”
“It was just by fluke,” he added, observing he had always thought of getting his four children into martial arts.
“I fell in love with it,” Rose recalled. “It wasn’t too gruelling. It wasn’t something too over the top.”
She said she chose to concentrate on patterns, as opposed to sparring. “I love it a lot,” she said.
She added she never really took to sparring. “I never liked to be hit,” she said.
It’s somewhat more demanding than sparring, as her father pointed out if one makes a mistake in patterns, it’s hard to make it up.
But there are advantages too.
“In patterns, I find it easier to express, not really my power, but my interest,” Rose observed. “I love to perform, and patterns, for me, lets me express that.”
Her love of performing also extends into her academics, as she is in the drama program at Mayfield.
That doesn’t mean she has abandoned sparring. Rose said she does some recreationally at the club. And her father observed when one reaches a certain level, they have to show proficiency in all parts of the art.
Needless to say, getting ready for the world competition means lots of training. Rose said she tries to get to the academy a couple of times per week, and she gets together with her two teammates for about two hours every Friday. And that’s going to increase as the competition draws near.
There’s also a financial factor, and Rose and her family are working on raising funds for the trip.
In addition to selling chocolate-covered almonds and T-shirts, Rose and her brother Daniel, 11, will be collecting pledges for a 10-K run Sept. 12. Details are to be worked out. There are hopes they will be able to do the run from Mayfield School to Alloa Public School, where they hope to have a rally, with demonstrations by other members of the Academy, as well as some performances by Mayfield students.
Her mother Sara said T-shirts can be preordered by calling 416-525-6892.
People who are interested in contributing to the effort can do so through the RBC Royal Bank account 02952-5006036, or TD Canada Trust account 159-6758379.
Rose is pretty confident about her chance in Mexico.
“I think I have a pretty good chance,” she said. “I’m gong for gold, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get there.”