Truth be told, I did not want to take on this assignment. I needed an article to write, and the Taekwondo Club needed to be written about, but I knew nothing about taekwondo or any martial art for that matter. I thought I would have to force myself through a meeting about a club I did not care about, and thereafter, force myself to write about the same. Walking into that meeting in Room 263, I was thinking the coming hour would not go by fast enough, but I scarcely noticed it pass at all – to my great surprise, I walked out of that meeting room an hour later not only having greatly enjoyed my time, but believing whole-heartedly that the Taekwondo Club is perhaps the best club at Liberty High School.
Before the meeting day, I interviewed the club president, Ryan Kim, a Junior. He started the club himself, and as president, almost all leadership opportunities fell to him. To my surprise, the Taekwondo Club was completely student-led. Though Mr. Krouse and Mrs. Gionfriddo serve as supervisors, all activities were organized by Ryan Kim and the others in the club. Ryan Kim himself was very experienced with taekwondo. His parents run the Mountain Kim dojo in Bealeton, and he has himself been doing taekwondo since a very young age. Ryan Kim had this to say when I asked him about his continued interest in the sport: “Knowing that I have learned these skills is a reassurance. If there’s some sort of problem, I know that I can defend myself.” I then asked why he started the club at Liberty, and he gave this response: “I mean, why not? It’s fun. I feel like if I teach to others, then I can reinforce my own skills as well, and get others to learn.” As I would learn later, Ryan Kim is not only an excellent leader, but as much a member of the club as anyone else.
The day of the meeting came fast. Before it began in earnest, I chatted with the three people who were there and helped them set out mats. Something I learned very quickly is that it is very easy to fall while doing this kind of thing, and these mats (though not soft) were definitely better to fall on than the floor. Though there were only three people in the room at the time – Ryan Kim, Ryan Helton, and M MacNeil (both Sophomores) – it was a very good environment. It was not a stuffy club that was all work and no play. Everyone was friends, and they had no problems joking around with each other and focusing on having fun while improving themselves. Despite my intrusion, they made me feel at home, and it was not too long before I was joking around with them as well.
When the meeting properly started, Ryan Kim began to lead the other two in stretches. They stretched practically everything there was to stretch: their necks, their waists, their legs, their arms, and their backs. I first thought this was perhaps a bit excessive, but its purpose soon became clear. In taekwondo, you use every part of your body, and a lot of the difficulty is in keeping track of all of it. Therefore, it was vitally important that everything got a good stretch.
After stretches, the club did some warm-up exercises. The exercise of the day was sit-ups, and the club was told to set their own goals. Without skipping a bit, Ryan Helton set his sit-up goal at 100. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ryan Helton before the meeting, where he revealed to me that, like the other Ryan, he had been doing taekwondo for some time: “I’ve been doing [taekwondo] since I was in Middle School, and when Ryan Kim decided to do this, I decided to help him out.” In short order, and to my amazement, he demolished those sit-ups like they were nothing and then went on through the rest of the meeting as if they never happened. Were I in his shoes, I would not have been able to stand back up, much less get through half of the sit-ups that he did.
Having breezed through their warm-up, the club began some basic kicking practice. Ryan Kim got out some paddle-shaped targets and held them up so the other two could have something to strike at. They started with front kicks, which are kicks with flat feet coming from the front of the body, and side kicks, a kick in which one turns their body and kicks out with the base of their foot. They then progressed into axe kicks (fast kicks that go up first and then come down) and the famous roundhouse kicks (kicks with a flat foot that come from the side). The sound of the kicks against the targets was very satisfying.
In particular, M MacNeil was an excellent kicker. Their movements were fast, snappy, and accurate, their skill apparent in the solid sound of targets being hit. After the practice was over, I interviewed them, and learned that like the other two club members in the room that day, they had been doing taekwondo since they were young: “I started taekwondo about when I was in second grade, and that was because I quit soccer. My dad made me make a list of five sports I wanted to do, because I had to take a sport, and at the very bottom I misspelled taekwondo. Because he did martial arts and used to be a black belt, he instantly signed me up. I’m honestly so happy he did because I wouldn’t be who I am today without it.”
After about thirty minutes of practice, I was invited to join in the practice. I was hesitant, dressed in tight jeans and a buttoned shirt that day, but was eventually convinced – though I had come into the meeting not overly interested in any of it, Ryan Helton and M MacNeil’s excellent displays of talent made me start hoping I’d get invited onto the mats maybe more than I wanted to admit. Despite my being a total novice, Ryan Kim explained the motions so well that even I could understand, and when I invariably messed up, he was ever-encouraging, pushing me in the right direction instead of honing on my faults. He took me through the same kicks that he took the other club members through, and they got easier and easier as I repeated them. Even the sidekick, which at first gave me so much trouble to get right on account of all the movement you need to do, was eventually conquered through Ryan Kim’s excellent teaching and my determination to not embarrass myself.
Jokes aside, I cannot praise enough Ryan Kim’s leadership and the real skill shown by all the club members I had the pleasure of watching work. Not only are all the club members supremely skilled, but also incredibly personable and kind people who are eager to share what they know with others. The atmosphere they have cultivated is one of hard but fun work, one that does not discriminate based on skill level or experience but rather hopes to be a place where everyone interested (or even not) can enjoy themselves and cultivate their own self-confidence. Our Taekwondo Club is more than happy to host any students who may be interested in the club in their meetings held on Tuesday and Thursday until 4 p.m in Room 263.
