Liberty University Club Sports
Princeton Tournament
Taekwondo team puts up good fights at ECTC tournament at Princeton
3/2/2023 1:49:00 PM | Taekwondo
Liberty University's taekwondo team competed in a record-setting East Coast Taekwondo Conference (ECTC) tournament this past Sunday at Princeton (N.J.) University, with more than 30 teams fielding a total of 724 student-athletes.
"That was more than they have ever had at any event, even at (NCTA) collegiate nationals," Liberty Head Coach Tom Childress said. "It was really huge, with lots of teams and lots of competition. A lot of the brackets started with a round of 128, not 64, for both the forms and fighting disciplines."
Unfortunately, the sheer numbers caused a backup in the tournament's brackets and prevented the Lady Flames' black belt team from contending for a potential gold medal.
"Any event that goes past 7:30 p.m., they finish any fights that they have in holding, but for safety reasons, they won't start any after that," Childress said, for thoseschools from far away having to drive too late at night. "This was only the second time they have had to invoke the rule, and it actually hurt us quite a bit."
The Lady Flames' trio of senior lightweight Reyna Collazo, senior middleweight Jenna Greene, and freshman heavyweight Xena Sawyer advanced to the semifinals by defeating Northwestern, which had beaten Liberty in the Gold Medal match of last semester's ECTC event at Cornell University.
"They did a wonderful job," Childress said. "All three were really on fire and had shown some of the best fighting I've seen in quite a while. They had some really extraordinary performances, considering how many rounds they had to go through. Jenna and Xena had not lost a match all day and Reyna held her own, so I was proud of everybody with that much competition out there."
All ECTC competition is held in a team format with the best of three fighters in men's or women's light, middle, and heavyweight divisions advancing through the bracket rounds, for both black belt and color belt divisions. Childress noted that that creates more esprit de corps than the individual format.
"We would have loved to have seen them finish," Childress added. "We were really looking forward to the rest of that bracket because everyone that was left, we had beaten before. That killed us in the overall team standings because instead of 128 points, we were awarded 64."
The Flames and Lady Flames could travel to an ACAT event at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill before sending a 12-competitor team to the April 14-16 NCTA National Championships in Boulder, Colo.
The event will also serve as the black belt team trials for the World University Games on Friday, April 14.
Last year, Greene and sophomore men's heavyweight black belt Leo Chang qualified to represent Team USA at the FISU America Games, held in October in Mexico. This year, the World University Games will take place in China in July.
"Jenna's had prior experience winning that, and she's going to be a pretty strong candidate at the team trials," Childress said of Greene. "More than likely, whoever wins the team trials this year will then have to fight the 2022 winner to see who actually gets to represent Team USA."
Childress is narrowing down the roster to take to nationals.
"It's not just based on their competition performance," he said. "We do take that into consideration, along with the type of team member he or she is, weighing in their attendance, motivation, and what we see in practice every day. We're looking for the people that when they're at practice, they're at practice and they mean business."
By Ted Allen/Staff Writer
