Hutt City's rising star Hayley Schofield, 15, has just returned from competing in three European tournaments.

In the Capital Cup, held in London and attended by 350 competitors, Hayley achieved bronze in both sparring and patterns.

However Hayley was denied a chance to fight for gold when an electronic failure cost her dearly in her first bout, which was against the 15 year old British and Europe age group champion.

After the 1st round Hayley led 2-1 but scored no more points in her final two rounds, even though she appeared to hit the target and lost 2-6.

A scoring malfunction was discovered later and a review of the video shows she would likely have won the bout and would have faced an opponent who was beaten by 12 points in the final.

Hayley and her father, John Schofield, travelled to the Belgium Open from London with top British club team Jaguars taekwondo team with their coach John Webster, a former top British fighter and director of sport at Brunel University, London.

Against a bruising 17 year-old Polish opponent, Hayley led after the first round, slipped behind to 9-8, 12-13 in the second and fought back from four points down to eventually lose 18-19.

Hayley's next competition was the Challenge Cup, also in Belgium where approx 750 competitors took part

John Schofield says forms are highly competitive in Europe with warm ups seemingly more intense than the fighters and delivery of the patterns are strong and very theatrical like compared to NZ where he believes we are more tight and controlled.

In Hayley's division she had 33 competitors with the top 50 per cent going through to the next round after the first pattern. Hayley narrowly missed going through.

Hayley had to withdraw from the sparring competition after suffering a torn cartilage in her previous tournament.

John says Hayley gained tremendous experience from the trip and particularly enjoyed being coached by the very experienced John Webster from London for both her London and Belgium Open fights.

Also travelling as part of his team among young enthusiastic competitors, with three British Olympic hopefuls in the side, was a highlight of the trip for Hayley.

Hayley is currently the NZ fighting title holder for her Junior Blackbelt
weight division. Last year she won silver at the Canadian Open in Montreal
losing the final to the Mexican 17 year old Open champion. In 2003 Hayley
won the Australian National and Open title.