Korea’s ancient martial art form of tae kwon do, which means “”the way of the foot and fist”” has sprouted roots on the UCSD campus. Through a very slow process, the sport has now been approved by administration to be recognized as an official UCSD club activity as of this fall.
The UCSD Tae Kwon Do club team hosted an exhibition tournament in Main Gym Rec Center on May 20 and competed against many of the top programs including USC and UCLA along with UC Irvine, who like UCSD is currently trying to be accepted into the Pac-West Conference.
The club has been in existence for two years and started out as an offshoot from the Korean Club, with five to eight people gathering regularly to practice the martial art. Since then, the group has grown to well over 30 members. Out of the 30 members on the team, half are on the competition squad while the other half enjoy a more casual kind of practicing to improve in the sport. The team is coached by two masters, Bobby Ren and Jackie Baek.
“”People come because they enjoy the environment we have created,”” club vice president senior Paul Montanez said. “”We all come together from different backgrounds and disciplines of tae kwon do and other martial arts and train together. The members range in all different skill levels.””
The tae kwon do team, now officially representing UCSD, is already looking to compete, and is currently applying for membership into the Pac-West Collegiate Tae Kwon Do Conference. The club is being reviewed by a committee, set in place by the commissioner of the Pac-West, in order to determine whether or not the UCSD program is ready for conference-level sparring.
The conference’s membership includes many highly competitive teams: Stanford University, UCLA, USC, Cal State East Bay, UC Berkeley and UC Davis. The UC Irvine team, like UCSD, is currently trying to earn approval for entry into the conference as well.
In order to prove to the committee that the UCSD tae kwon do program is competent enough to compete at the Pac-West level, team members have participated in multiple exhibition tournaments to familiarize themselves with the conference’s style of tournaments, as well as to exhibit the skills they feel warrants them the right to compete.
UCSD hosted an exhibition tournament for the first time on May 20 at Main Gym and competed against USC, UC Irvine and UCLA, practicing essentially Olympic-style sparring.
Each match consists of three two-minute rounds where the fighter ending with the most points wins. Points are earned in three ways: One point is rewarded for a kick to the torso and two points are given for a kick to the head.
There is also something called a “”punch point,”” where a fighter delivers a clean punch to the torso of his competitor and knocks him to the floor.
There is a floor referee and four corner point-givers, and in a fight, three of them have to lock in a point for it to be accepted. A fight is called at a 12-point cap or when one fighter earns a seven-point lead over his competitor.
There are many elements of tae kwon do that instructors emphasize can hurt or aid a competitive fighter during a match. Some of these include flexibility, agility, stability, explosiveness and fast reactions. However, innate physical endowments can only carry a fighter so far; the best tae kwon do competitors must also be smart fighters. Participants cannot lose focus after getting scored on or out of frustration, or else tables can easily turn in their opponent’s favor.
“”What I have personally found to be very useful in competitions is a strong ‘ki’ or fighting spirit,”” junior fighter Michael Kim said. “”A sharp and penetrating ‘kiup,’ which is a battle cry, at the onset of any match bolsters your confidence and, if you are lucky, spooks the opponent enough to mess up their balance or proper weight distribution.””
Many of UCSD’s fighters fared extremely well in the tournament. One standout fighter was sophomore Kenneth Eum, who began practicing the art of tae kwon do at age four – he has since earned his fourth-degree black belt. Eum dominated the competition in all three of his matches. First, he defeated a USC competitor by reaching the seven-point gap threshold and followed the same course in his second match against a UCLA competitor. Eum slammed his opponent with two kicks to the head to earn four points and eventually moved the margin up to seven points to win.
In Eum’s final match, he went head-to-head with the captain of the well-established USC program. Eum put the pressure on early in the match, starting the fight with a quick snap to his competitor’s head. It was a close and action-packed relay of back-to-back kicks, quick counters and numerous falls to the floor before Eum reached the 12-point cap in the third round to walk off the mat with the win.
“”It doesn’t matter who stands in front of you; anyone can train themselves to defend against someone’s attacks,”” Montanez said. “”You have to be 200 percent committed to yourself if you want to win and every time you kick, you have to kick to score.””
One unique and beautiful aspect of tae kwon do is the level of respect that each fighter has for each other. Despite all the yelling and grunting during the matches, they ceremonially start and end peacefully with a bow and handshake with one another, as well as with the sideline coach of their opponent.
The art is very fierce – but when a fighter goes down and takes a while to rise or rolls around on the floor due to a painful blow, his opponent is usually right with him on the mat and gives a rub to his shoulder.
Though tae kwon do competition fighters wear a large array of protective gear including shin guards, elbow guards, helmets and chest guards, there are numerous risks involved with such a direct physical contact sport. Each team takes a few days off to heal after tournaments, and although it is often just bruises that plague the martial artists, there are, according to some members, more injuries that could arise.
“”During a UCLA competition, I gave one of the competitors a black eye due to a kick in the face,”” Eum said. “”The most serious injury that could happen is a concussion due to shock in the head, but that hardly happens.””
The club practices hard two hours a day for three days a week. Practices entail intensive workouts and drilling techniques, all to build stamina for next year’s competition in what they hope will be the Pac-West tournaments should they be accepted.
“”What I saw at the beginning of the year was that UCSD had an immense talent pool, but it wasn’t well developed,”” master Ren said. “”Over the year, I have seen them go from raw energy and athleticism to more smart, strategic sparring. And from recent tournaments I can say that UCSD has the potential to become the best school in the southern California region of the Pac-West.””
