TKU Taekwondo Team won the Gold Medal for two years in a row of the B group of College Level in the 2007 National Taekwondo Tournament on May 19 and 20. They will join the World University Taekwondo Championship in July to win the title for our country. Hung chun-peng (junior, Department of Information and Communication), the team captain, announced with great joy, “It feels great to win again! I have forgotten all the pain I had during the practice!”
TKU Taekwondo Team performed excellently in the past four years, and won two silver medals in 2004 and 2005. Unlike the previous combat game, the Taekwondo Martial Art Exhibition Game puts emphasis on different aspects. The contents of the game include hand striking, leg-striking, and self-defense. The competing team consists of 9 members performing together with music. There are five main evaluation points of this competition: orderly fashion, imposing manner, difficulty of the moves, and the percentage of successfully breaking bricks. Those who get higher points in the five categories win. This competition places much importance on team spirit, which needs a long-term rehearsal and team cooperation.
Huang yang-ming (sophomore, Dept. of Computer Science and Information Engineering), coordinator of TKU Taekwondo club, declares that the martial art competition requires a lot of preparations. It begins from one-man training, and then to a total of nine person’s collaboration. Form Monday to Friday night, while other classmates are having a good time, the team members have to assemble and do the training together. Besides, the process of rehearsal is painstaking and extremely complicated. Besides practicing the Taekwondo moves, the members also have to learn other martial arts, like Self Defense and Judo. It is truly a great achievement to receive this award.
A week before the big day, Kao chen-you (freshman, Dept. of Computer Science and Information Engineering) injured his right knee and had seven stitches on it. However, Kou still joined the practice every day although he did not fully recover. He joined the contest with his wounded knee. His sportsmanship inspired and deeply moved the other members. Hung also explained the tough situation this year: more than half of the “golden lineup” last year could not join the competition this time for certain reasons. Therefore, 6 out of the 9 members are freshmen, and three of the girls have even started from white-belt degree with almost no experience and martial art background. Though the training is hard, they still work even harder and catch up with others very quickly. Hence, they deserve praise indeed. “On the day of competition, we did our best and had the best result!” one of girl said. ( ~Chen Chi-szu )
