The Cornell Sport Taekwondo team hosted a successful tournament this past Saturday at Bartels Hall, finishing in first place in a tournament with over 300 competitors. The Red is preparing for another tournament that will be held in Princeton, N.J., on Nov. 22.

The team did very well this past weekend by finishing in first place. However, Cornell still trails MIT in overall points this year by a small margin.

“We won the tournament, but we’re a little bit down on the season,” said senior president Elta Mariani.

“We’re only down by 25 points, which isn’t that much,” said senior captain Nicole Houseal.

The team competes in the Eastern Collegiate Taekwondo Conference (ECTC), a league comprised of approximately 30 schools. Recently changing its name from the Ivy Northeast Collegiate Taekwondo League (INCTL), the ECTC was founded in 1983 and allows taekwondo athletes from different schools to compete in five tournaments, two in the fall and three in the spring, held throughout the year. The competition is fierce, as many skilled athletes compete, but the league also provides a good opportunity for beginner athletes to test their skills as well.

Cornell usually finds its most challenging opponent to be MIT. The two teams usually find themselves leading the 30 teams by a large margin and were often the only two teams contending for the championship. Cornell often dominated the league in the 1990s. Interestingly, the MIT team coach trained under the current Cornell teacher, Han Don Cho.

“We have a fun rivalry going,” Mariani said.

The competitions are comprised of two parts, which are the poomsae and the kyorugi. The poomsae refers to forms and involves performing certain patterns individually. The kyorugi is often called sparring and is a match between two competitors.

“We do sparring practices every Thursday in which we just put on our gear and spar whoever we want,” Houseal said.

“We dominate in the sparring,” Mariani said.

Competitions are usually done as teams competing in certain groups divided by weight, gender and rank. Each team is comprised of a lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight of a gender that competes within a division of rank. The ranks are cut off by the belt color an athlete has, but any athlete with a lower belt can choose to compete in higher divisions. In this way, even newcomers can rise up to compete in the highest division if they show enough talent.

For sparring, the tournament has rules similar to the official Olympic Taekwondo events except that for the ECTC, the rounds are shorter and the rings are slightly smaller. The objective of each athlete is to score as many points as possible in a given period of time. The athlete can score points for hitting or kicking the chest protector or head. A body shot counts as one point, a head shot is worth three points and landing a spinning kick is worth two points. A knockout is counted as an automatic win.

“We train for it like any other club sport with conditioning, cardio and strength training,” said senior lightweight Anthony Liu.

The club meets officially on Sunday afternoons at Helen Newman for training. The team is closely related to the P.E. class that Han Don Cho teaches. Cho, a Cornell alum, has an extensive background in Taekwondo with a seventh degree black belt, and helped co-found the ECTC as well as Cornell’s team. He also has his own dojang near the mall where he teaches every Saturday. Although the team does not officially have varsity practices, Cho trains the team multiple times throughout the week to make the sure the team is well prepared for competing.

“He coaches us and does all the competition training in his free time,” Liu said. “We commit as much effort and energy as a varsity sport.”

“The core group of people who compete go to as many practices as they can,” Mariani said.

The team does remain a club sport and is open to those who show interest.

“We’re definitely looking to expand as beginner points are more important this season,” Mariani said.

“The club is open to anyone,” Houseal added.