Taekwondo team fights to finish at ACAT, ECTC tournaments

Sunday, November 5

Ithaca, NY

8:00 AM

Liberty University Club Sports

Cornell TKD Tournament

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Liberty senior Jenna (Greene) Gonino lands a kick during a match at the ACAT opening tournament hosted by by UNC-Chapel Hill. (Photos by Reyna Collazo)

Taekwondo team fights to finish at ACAT, ECTC tournaments

11/14/2023 4:01:00 PM | Taekwondo

Liberty sent 24 athletes to UNC Chapel Hill in late October and 21 to Cornell in early November to kick off their season.

Liberty University's taekwondo team experienced consistently strong showings across the board at both its first Atlantic Collegiate Alliance of Taekwondo (ACAT) competition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Oct. 29 and first East Coast Taekwondo Conference (ECTC) tournament at Cornell University on Nov. 5 in Ithaca, N.Y.

Head Coach Tom Childress was not able to travel with the team to its first two tournaments due to health issues. In his place, he sent Assistant Coaches Jim Scott (in photo above at right) and Cameron Conelly, who came on staff as a volunteer assistant last season after competing on the team in the 2021-22 season.

"They were able to step in and did a really good job with the team, which went out and performed very well," Childress said.

He said 15 out of the 24 athletes that traveled to UNC medaled in sparring and a few medaled in poomsae, a forms competition.

"That was one of the reasons we brought Cameron on, to serve as poomsae coach, and it paid off there," Childress said. "We saw a big leap (compared to) what we've done in that event in the past."

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Freshman Donkyung Lee competes in poomsae in the ACAT event at UNC Chapel Hill.

The tournament featured nearly 100 competitors from American, Duke, Liberty, UNC, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).

Sophomores Julia Eesley and Khara Pastean both placed second in their respective classes of poomsae at UNC while sophomore Ericson Lehmann, junior Stephanie Yuen, senior Chyanne Armes, seniors Noah Butcher and Paul Bearchell, and sophomore Stephanie Stasaitis came in third and senior Felicity Bendever finished fifth.

The Flames had three first-place finishes in men's sparring from junior Jackson Hale (advanced middleweight), Lehmann (advanced lightweight), and Bearchell (intermediate middleweight) with senior Jenna (Greene) Gonino (advanced middleweight) and sophomore Hannah Wharton (beginner heavyweight) winning their respective divisions of women's sparring.

Freshman Dongkyung Lee (advanced heavyweight) came in second place in men's sparring and Butcher (intermediate lightweight), freshman Joe Gardner (beginner middleweight), and sophomore Matthew Knowles (beginner lightweight) finished third. Meanwhile, Eesley (intermediate middleweight) and Stasaitis (beginner heavyweight) landed in second place in women's sparring followed by third-place showings from Armes (intermediate lightweight), senior Sophia Varrati (intermediate lightweight), sophomore Heaven Alexander (intermediate middleweight), and Pastean (beginner middleweight).

Liberty sent 21 student-athletes to the ECTC competition at Cornell, which featured more than 450 athletes from 28 schools mostly in the Northeast.

The Flames and Lady Flames combined to tie for second in Division 3, paced by the bronze medal white/yellow belt team showing of Pastean and Wharton, who fought their way through to the fourth round in women's sparring despite only having two competitors. With most of their opponents sparring with three, that meant both Pastean and Wharton had to win their bouts in order to advance.

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Liberty's Khara Pastean spars at the ECTC tournament at Cornell (N.Y.).

Liberty's trio of Armes, Eesley, and freshman Emily Sloane advanced to the quarterfinal round and a two-man black-belt team of Lehmann and Kim made it to the second round for the Flames.

"That was phenomenal," Childress said. "It speaks volumes for us. We also had a lot of color belts make it to the round of 16, which was really exciting for us. We are not quite at that level where we're medaling yet, but we are closer than we have been in quite a while. I was happy to watch from home and cheer them on."

Childress is considering taking the team to another ECTC event at Princeton in the spring semester, which would likely be its last chance to prepare for the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association (NCTA) National Championships in California in March.

"If we have a healthy team and less injuries, both our men's and women's black belt team would likely make it deeper into the competition field, even to the medal rounds, and could potentially score high enough to place in the top three or five," he said.

By Ted Allen/Staff Writer

Flames sophomore Ericson Lehmann kicks against a Duke University competitor at the ACAT event at UNC-Chapel Hill.