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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

Tae Kwon Do club to hold friendly tournament

Tourney to feature 5 Midwest teams, black belt grad reunion

For the fourth straight year, the IU Tae Kwon Do club is gearing up for its own tournament. The competition starts at 12 p.m. Saturday. Club teams from DePauw, IU-Purdue University Indianapolis, University of Wisconsin-Madison and two club teams from Purdue are all scheduled to compete. \nAlso, black belts who have graduated from IU are invited to come back and participate in the festivities. \n"Before, we only invited Purdue and DePauw to compete and hang out with us," club instructor Randy Wilson said. "Then we decided to invite more clubs, and this year will showcase the largest amount of competitors we have ever had." \nThe tournament will be two-fold. The first event in the program is a forms competition.\n"Forms competition involves a sequence of planned skilled moves, whether it be a block, punch, kick, evasion move or counter move, that are put together in a specific pattern. The higher the rank (belt color) the harder, longer and more intricate the moves are," club president Theresa Conway said. \nSecond, there will be a sparring competition. Sparring consists of two opponents combating each other. To score a point, one must get a clean kick or punch in above the waist of their opponent. In the lower divisions, kicks to the head will not be allowed. All other divisions are instructed to use light head contact. \nIn Olympic Tae Kwon Do -- which just became an Olympic sport in 2000 -- as well as state, regional, national and international levels of competition, hard contact is commonplace. At the tournament this weekend, this will not be allowed. \nTheresa Conway said the tournament will be safe and feature friendly competition.\n"We want to make first-timers as well as everyone else less nervous for their individual performance," Conway said.\nClub instructor Tom Heitger said he agrees because, for beginners, this tournament won't be intimidating or threatening.. \n"The point of the tournament is to promote intercollegiate interaction for now and the future," Heitger said. "Another perk of the tournament is the low price. The fee is only $15." \nAt most tournaments, competitors can expect to pay $50 to enter and even more money for each additional event, Heitger said. \nIn between the forms and sparring, club instructors Wilson and Jim Thomas will be giving a demonstration. Thomas will be showcasing Hapkido self-defense techniques. Hapkido is a type of self defense that teaches how to defend oneself against opponents armed with guns and multiple opponents who are armed with weapons. \nAfter that demonstration, Wilson will be doing a sequence of board breaks using kicks. He will then finish with brick breaks with his hand.\nJunior black belt Lauren Burch sums up what the tournament stands for.\n"This tournament stresses having fun and challenging yourself to see how well you can do as an individual," Burch said.\n-- Contact staff writer Ryan Corazza at rcorazza@indiana.edu.

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