CU Taekwondo team finishes another successful season

The University of Colorado Boulder taekwondo team made club sports history as they became the second-best-ranked team in the country. With a roster of more than 40 athletes headed by coach David Lee, the Buffaloes finished the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association championships by picking up gold, silver and bronze medals in everything from black belt sparring to self-defense demonstrations. The sparring team took home seven Gold medals, nine Silver medals and 11 Bronze medals. Of the 37 athletes, three suffered injuries during other events, meaning almost 80% of the team stood on the podium.

On Sunday, CU senior Ian Lopez defended his championship title in men’s finweight sparring, cruising to victory after five matches. Lopez came out strong in the semi-final fight, scoring two head shots on his opponent, Nam Le from the University of Pennsylvania, within the first 10 seconds of the match and taking an eight-point lead within the first 20 seconds. While Lopez maintained dominance of the ring for the most part, Le kept him on edge. Ultimately, Le was no match for Lopez’s defensive kicks as he scored several more headshots throughout the first round.

Lopez was more patient in the second round as his opponent got a better idea of his tactics, but Lopez quickly regained the lead with a hook kick to the head. After some clashing near the edge of the ring, Lopez managed to clip Le again with a lightning-fast roundhouse kick to the face. Within the next 10 seconds, Lopez would strike twice more, securing two more headshots for a 13-3 lead. With that, Lopez advanced to the finals.

Again, Lopez came out strong, pushing his opponent, Owen Lockwood of Brown University,  with his front leg, getting into constant clashes. The fight was scoreless in the first 20 seconds or so, but Lopez managed to kick up a roundhouse to the face before falling to the floor, giving him a four-point advantage over Lockwood.

In a tit-for-tat scuffle, shots were fired. Bringing the score up seven to two, Lopez maintained dominance and attacked in the air, switching his kicks as he advanced. Halfway through the first round, the match was quickly turning into a blowout with Lopez leading 13-2 and generally dominating the ring. Lopez took the first round easily.

The second round started a bit slower with the two appearing to be accustomed to each other, but Lopez snuck in a quick flick to the face, taking a 3-0 lead. Lopez continued to keep Lockwood at a distance, flicking his front foot like a cat anticipating a mouse.  Lopez was patient, feeling him out before taking another quick swipe to the face, followed quickly by another and another. Before long, he had a 14-0  lead, losing one point only to a penalty for falling to the floor while trying to kick.

While Lockwood put up a greater defense toward the end of the second round, Lopez impressed the crowd once more, whipping out a surprise spinning hook kick to the face to add an extra five points to his lead. The match ended in an absolute blowout with Lopez besting his opponent 22-2.

“I seem to find myself in the same situations every fight,” Lopez said after his match. “I get so anxious and so thrown out of whack. By the time I’m warming up and getting ready, I’m not really thinking about strategy, I’m mostly telling myself to relax and stay level-headed. It was mostly like, as long as I kept my cool, everything would go good.”

Last year, Lopez took the championship title in collegiate nationals before going to the U.S. nationals in Dallas, Texas, where he took second place in his division. He hasn’t ruled out returning to the national championships later this summer, either.

Meanwhile, junior Aly Ayers clawed her way to the podium as well, taking silver amid a grueling women’s featherweight division with 13 matches.

“I was very surprised to see so many people in my bracket,” Ayers said during the tournament.“I’ve been doing Taekwondo since I was eight, and I’ve never had that many competitors before. I was excited about it! I was looking forward to fighting some people that I haven’t fought with before.”

The semifinal match pitted Ayers against her longtime rival, Lauren Harrington from the University of Portland. The two exchanged kick for kick at the bell, when Harrington stealthily kicked Ayers in the trunk for a two-point lead. But Ayers returned volley with a headshot that required video review for verification to put her in the lead.

The match resumed with the two carefully sizing each other up before Ayers took control of the ring. After a series of kicks and punches, Ayers increased her lead with a roundhouse kick to the trunk, followed by a combination of a straight punch to the chest and another roundhouse kick. Ayers went on to take the first round of the semifinal match, 8-2.

Harrington came out looking for revenge, aggressively going after Ayers, who calmly defended herself and secured the first kick of the round. Harrington’s impatience would cost her, as Ayers countered a flurry of high kicks with a headshot of her own. It wasn’t long before Ayers held the commanding lead of 12-0.

The Portland opponent was thirsty for revenge and desperate to get on the board, but it would seem that with every attack she threw out, Ayers managed to come back with a successful counter that acted as insurance for her lead. Harrington proved to be no match for Ayers as she fell 21-0 against the Boulder athlete.

 For Ayers, the final matchup pitted her against Grand Canyon University’s Bella Morrissey. Morrissey came out aggressive, pushing Ayers back with a cut kick to the torso. Within seconds a flurry of kicks was spewing across the mat before Morrissey landed a shot to the chest. Morrissey stayed aggressive, keeping Ayers on her toes, and moving quickly, She engaged in the majority of scuffles, keeping Ayers in a defensive position.

But Ayers fought back, pushing Morrissey to the edge of the ring before the refs had to break it up. Still, halfway through the round, Morrissey had a 4-0 lead and Ayers had to act quickly. The junior fought back with a series of strikes of her own, deflecting headshots, keeping Morrissey on the defensive, seeming to turn the tide as she controlled the ring, but to no avail as the round ended with the win for Morrissey.

Morrissey once again came out swinging in the second round, aggressively kicking Ayers, forcing her back and securing a quick five-to-zero lead within the first minute. Within the last few seconds of the match, Ayers managed to get on the board with a headshot to the chin, still falling short with Morrissey taking the match with the final score of 14-4. Despite this, Ayers’s teammates noted her final fight proved inspirational.

A day earlier, the Buffaloes’ color belt athletes also managed to clean up in the Golden State, placing second in sparring overall among 715 athletes from 70 colleges and universities, a number the NCTA says is the largest turnout in its 47-year history.

It wasn’t uncommon to see more than one CU athlete from the same division up on the podium flying the black and gold Buffalo flag. The sparring team took home seven gold medals, nine silver, and eleven bronze. In all, Coach Lee says roughly 80% of the team stood on the podium at some point during the three-day event.

“That’s an incredible number,” Coach Lee said. “Historically, our average was 30% with some of our better teams converting at 50%. It really speaks to our world-class coaching staff and the type of athletes we have.”

Coach Lee singled out senior Heramb Mohite, who fought in the blue belt heavy- and middleweight division. Mohite went up against a feisty opponent from the University of Texas Austin. Their opponent came out swinging, but Heramb, standing a head taller than his opponent, at 6’2”, managed to keep a solid lead in the first round. Mohite wound up taking gold.

He explained how the heat of the moment overwhelmed him before his teammates helped him regain his confidence.

“All my nervousness reached an apex and I believe I blacked out. I remember someone chanting my name from the crowd and everything came back to me. As weird as it sounds, I finally realized I was in a match and got back in my zone and started kicking back,” he said.“The team chanting my name or ‘sko Buffs’ or other chants gave me a confidence boost that I’ve never experienced before. It really felt as though the team was carrying all my nervousness and let me fight freely.”

The Buffaloes also managed to perform well without fighting gear, during forms and demonstrations. In another first for Boulder, freshman Jasper Shen, a green belt, managed to place in men’s poomsae with a silver medal, the first time an athlete has placed in forms at all. Led by Coach Khaliyah Saunders Boden, the Buffs’ demonstration team racked up another bronze medal.

In demonstrations, groups of athletes perform various choreographed movements to music while also breaking boards, doing acrobatics and displaying a variety of self-defense techniques. Though they fell short of retaining their national champion title from last year’s event, Coach Boden emphasized the demo team was trying to innovate and inspire more teams to get involved in the demonstration event.

“On a technical level I can see how we got a lower score than expected, and we will use this as a learning experience in order to come back and regain our title,” Coach Boden said.“But I know our performance was show-stopping and something others will remember. Even the day after while I was checking into my own fight, the refs and judges were still congratulating me and telling me my demo was the wildest thing they had ever seen, especially with all the roses.”

In 2014, the Buffaloes went to Berkeley with a total of 13 people. Only one athlete reached the podium that year. A decade later, they stand at seemingly unexpected heights.

“In the past, every year we had gotten closer and closer, last year we only missed the podium by a few points and the previous year we were in the same boat, so we have had this fire growing for a while now,” Coach Ivan Maldonado said.“We always push new athletes to just stick through it until nationals because it is a one-of-a-kind experience. We tell people that have that experience to encourage and inspire others. Once they experience that, they will always come back for more.”

And so the Buffaloes eye next year’s championships with a hearty appetite for victory. “We coming,” Coach Ivan said, echoing Coach Prime. “We like to win.”

 

Guest article by Jesse Hughes