April 2014 Testing and Activities.

Amanda Salm, Gabe Hurrish and Zach Ulrich

More than seventy taekwondo students from Stevens Taekwondo Academy and the UW-Stevens Point taekwondo program tested successfully for higher belts recently at the Stevens Point YMCA.  Nine martial artists reached new black belt ranks.

Benjamin Goodberlet earned a third degree black belt with crisp demonstrations of the taebek form, advanced sparring skills and kick combinations.  He easily snapped his board  using a back spinning side kick for his speed break.

Shelby Finnessy and John Paul Bunn reached second degree black belt following their performance of the keumgang form, sparring and kick combinations.  Finnessy cracked her two-inch board with her first attempt, using a back spinning side kick.  Bunn broke two boards with a back spinning side kick.

Brian Burns, Tammy Weiss, Jake Kujawa, and ten-year-old Shruti Subramanian achieved full, first degree black belt ranking with their performances of koryo and 4 taegeuk forms, advanced sparring and kick combinations and passing an oral examination on the history, terminology, forms and creeds of taekwondo.  Burns used a back spinning side kick to break his board and Weiss broke with a butterfly kick.  Kujawa smashed his board with a back jumping side kick and Subramanian snapped her board with a crisp back spinning side kick.

Moving into black belt ranks as deputy black belts, Tanner Rogers, Smantha Brunner and Andrew Bowling demonstrated sparring, kicks and five taegeuk forms.  Rogers jumped over two chairs in a flying side kick to break his board, Brunner used an autobahn to break her board and Bowling snapped his board using a working crescent kick to back spinning side kick.

Three of the more than sixty color belt students received trophies for excellence in testing. Green belt Zach Ulrich won first place, blue belt Gabe Hurrish earned second place and yellow belt Amanda Salm took home the third place trophy.  The testing was judged by Grandmaster Dwight Stevens, assisted by  senior masters Mark Henkel and Bill Dragolovich.
Two special training events occurred in April.  Senor masters Hilde Henkel and Karen Johnson taught a free introduction to self defense for forty UW-Stevens Point students, sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center.  Grandmaster Dwight Stevens and senior master Mark Henkel  gave a free seminar on board breaking at the Five Rings Taekwondo School in Wausau.


Scheduling reminder:

The YMCA classes resume with a new session on April 22.
The next testing date if June 15, 2014.

Senior Master Mark Henkel teaching breaking