After placing third overall and first in the novice division at last season's National Collegiate Taekwondo Association Tournament, the Tae Kwon Do Club is getting started early on preparations for the 2007 tournament. Despite graduating four of its five student instructors from last season, the team is already training for the national tournament to be held at Texas A&M University next spring and members say it has experienced little drop-off in performance so far.
On Oct. 15, the Bears placed sixth overall in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tournament, and one of their three-man teams finished first in the Men's Sparring Division for first-time competitors. There are two divisions at tae kwon do events: one based on technique and called poom-se, or forms, and the other based on competition against opponents, called sparring.
Kevin Swong '08, the club's vice president, took home first place in the men's White/Yellow Belt Forms and Kwan Lin '07 added a second place finish in Men's Red Belt Forms. A team of first-years in their debut tae kwon do competition also placed first in the Men's Sparring Division (First-Time). Karl Su Yuan Yao '10, Jesse Mahautmr '10 and Vero Testa '10 won five straight matches to claim the top spot in their division.
Despite the loss of so many members, the recent success is nothing new for a club that boasts more than 60 members and has numerous black belts among its ranks. The first-years' performance was especially telling because, according to Swong, the club prides itself on its welcoming attitude toward students with no previous training in tae kwon do.
"Some people come into the club with some martial arts experience but most people are just starting out," Swong said. "But they still come two, three, four times a week and they train hard and you could see how much better they've gotten. I was real proud of (the team of Su, Mahatmir and Testa)."
Brown also did well in the women's events at the MIT competition, where the Bears finished in second and third place in the Novice Sparring C Division. Swong said women are components of clubs at most other schools, but the Brown club's female participation is higher than most.
"I think this year we have a higher percentage of women coming to the training sessions than before," he said. "More and more ladies want to be involved because you get such a good workout. But they come here and really take it seriously. Angela Yang ('09) is a tiny woman, but she's one of the best fighters we have."
One of the biggest reasons for the club's recruiting success are its student instructors. Officially, Sung Park '95 is the team's director, but he also must attend to his own dojo in Smithfield, R.I., and he is often unable to make all of the team's seven separate sessions and nearly 11 hours of instruction each week.
Instead, the tae kwon do club takes advantage of its members who have prior knowledge of the sport. Michael Hoe '08, a blackbelt, is now the main student instructor, this year and Van-anh Nguyen '09 and Nicholas Chung '09 have joined him in teaching their fellow students.
"The student instructors are really the backbone of the club," Hoe said. "Working with their classmates makes it much more comfortable for new members. It's hard to have a master yelling at you, which can be intimidating, but we can relate to the new students in terms of classwork and school much better, obviously."
Fostering a team atmosphere among all the members of the tae kwon do team starts at the very beginning of the semester. Hoe said the club typically holds separate sessions for new and returning members. This way, Hoe and the other student instructors can devote more attention to members who otherwise might have felt overwhelmed at first.
The classes normally remain divided until the team participates in its first tournament. By that time, the intricacies of tae kwon do, which Hoe said new students can often view as "kind of weird at first," have become normal. The team acquitted itself very nicely in its first live competition.
"With losing five instructors from last year, I was terrified of taking over the head instructor position," Hoe said. "After the MIT competition, it was very refreshing to see the results. We took half the team, about 40 members, and half of them were new members and everyone did very well. Not only did we do well, but the energy level was extremely high. Everybody was excited and cheering each other on the whole time."
Now that the Bears have their first tournament behind them, the team is confident that the problems stemming from the high turnover rate have been solved.
"The club has been doing better every year since I've been here," Swong said. "We were third in nationals my freshman year ... our instructors are great, and as we get more and more people involved with the club, we are only going to get stronger."
