Hi! I’m Judy Liu, a senior in high school at Basis Independent Silicon Valley. I first became introduced to Kungfu when I was six years old back during Omei Academy’s prime years, but I became more familiarly acquainted with Taiji at Omei when I was eleven. This summer I will be attending the Wushu Championships at the World Games held in Birmingham, Alabama in the USA on July 12th and 13th. The World Games are an international multi-sport event comprising sports and sporting disciplines that are not contested in the Olympic Games, such as Ju-Jitsu, Karate, Kickboxing, Tug-of-war, Squash, etc. The World Games are usually held every four years, one year after the Summer Olympic Games. For Wushu at the World Games, at most two men and two women are chosen to represent the USA in Wushu disciplines. I qualified for this position due to my qualification for the USA Wushu Team in 2019 and my placing in the top six at the World Wushu Championships in 2019.
I am super excited to attend the World Games. Not only will this be my first time attending a multi-sport international competition, but also as I will be attending college in the Fall of 2022 (looking to study Physics and maybe Harp Performance), I can say that with my training for the Games and the competition experience before leaving the bear hug of this team and my family, I will be gaining invaluable experiences bringing my lessons and values, not just in the sport and discipline of Wushu and Taiji, but also in life as well.
I am grateful toward the school as well as all of my teammates at Omei Academy whom I see every few days where we sweatily kick up the green carpet fur into the air and shout “Jiayo!” for each other. And I am evermore grateful to Master Zou who has known me since I was tiny and running around like a little squirrel, and has helped me, taught me, stayed patient with me, listened to me, and gave me lessons on everything.
I hope that along this journey toward World Games and beyond, I will learn not only to become a better martial artist, but also a better student, teammate, older sister, daughter, and person.