Taekwondo athletes gearing up for this weekend’s NCTA nationals in Boulder
4/13/2023 6:48:49 PM | Taekwondo
Liberty University’s taekwondo team has a baker’s dozen of its student-athletes in Boulder, Colo., for this Friday’s through Sunday’s NCTA National Championships, which will kick off with the black belt team trials for the World University Games in China in July.
Senior women’s middleweight Jenna Greene and sophomore men’s heavyweight Leo Chang qualified to represent Team USA at the FISU America Games held in October in Mexico by capturing gold medals at last season’s NCTA championships. The Flames and Lady Flames hope to have a couple more qualify as they contend for a strong team finish at nationals.
“We’ve had a great season,” Liberty Head Coach Tom Childress said. “Our first event of the year (Nov. 5) at Cornell University, we scored our highest point total (124) at any one event that we’ve ever had.”
Freshmen make up the majority of the team’s national contenders and they have made tremendous progress throughout their first season.
“The rate at which (the newcomers) have learned and adapted to sport taekwondo has been absolutely amazing,” Childress said. “That is why we have had such a good season. It’s not one or two people doing well, it’s the team doing well, and that is what we really love to see.”
“This season has been really fun,” added Skyler Beres, one of nine freshmen out of 13 Liberty competitors at nationals. “It’s really cool to see how far people have come and have been able to push themselves past their limits.”
Since competing extremely well at another ECTC tournament at Princeton in early March, the Flames and Lady Flames are coming off a few intense weeks of practice leading up to this weekend’s main event.
“Preparing for nationals has been really grueling,” junior Julia Eesley said. “We’ve been putting a lot of work into it and it’s been fun, so I’m excited to see this work on this mat translate onto that mat.”
“We’ve put in some tough training sessions right before nationals so that we can be at the top of our game,” Beres added. “We’re going to have a really fun time fighting all of those other schools.”
Chidress said that while battling for podium finishes in their respective black or color belt fights will be a priority, the team’s primary focus is sharing the Gospel with their competitors, mainly off the mat.
“We are really eager to see how everybody fares out on the national stage,” Childress said. “We’re really looking forward to it and I think we will do really well. As always, what we really look forward to is going out and talking about Liberty, talking about Jesus, and what we do here at Liberty, what we feel sets us apart from other people … not only in our words, but also in our actions.”
“There’s going to be upwards of 400 competitors from all over the United States, so it’s going to be a lot of people from all different walks of life,” Eesley added. “We just get to show them what our walk of life looks like with Christ and maybe bring them alongside that and introduce them to what that love can look like.”
Video edited by Micah Adams/Club Sports Video & Media Assistant