JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin Fourth-year neuroscience student
Tiffany Loui kicks back as a Taekwondo
student.
By Mayar Zokaei
Daily Bruin Contributor
[email protected]
Four years ago, Randy Chambliss taught Kevin Stephanoff how to
do a jump-kick.
Last quarter, he dispensed another pearl of wisdom to his
stepson ““ how to jump-start a dormant sport.
Thanks to the unwavering efforts of both father and stepson,
UCLA now harbors a Taekwondo team ““ sort of.
Stephanoff, now a freshman in Westwood, found that grasping the
process of an aerial leg maneuver wasn’t all that difficult a
task. Trying to decipher the bureaucratic process of garnering
Taekwondo recognition as a club sport at UCLA was more of a
battle.
“First, we had to become a student (organization), fill
out paperwork, get some officers, put an ad in the Daily Bruin, and
get some sign boards,” Stephanoff said. “It was a lot
of work, and there’s still more left.”
But if any tandem was perfectly tailored to initiate such a
program, it was the duo of Chambliss and Stephanoff.
JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin
Chambliss is a sixth-degree black belt, a nationally certified
coach and has an extensive background in the sport. He laid the
groundwork for Taekwondo programs at the University of Kentucky in
the late 1980s and sparked another at the University of Colorado in
1996.
Stephanoff is a second-degree black belt with the exuberance and
energy required for such a job.
More than 40 students expressed immediate interest in the
program, and currently there are 20 bona fide members in the group.
Some have experience in Taekwondo and are looking to perpetuate
their skills and compete on a national collegiate circuit.
JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin
Then there are students like Tiffany Loui, a 5-foot-2, 110-pound
senior, who responded to an ad in the paper and partook in the
activities initially to get back into shape. It didn’t take
long for the diminutive Loui, who has a background in dance and
used to practice Kung Fu, to realize the toll Taekwondo takes on
your body.
“After the first class, I noticed I couldn’t jump
out of bed as quickly as I wanted,” Loui said.
“Taekwondo is more about developing strength than Kung
Fu.”
The synergy of self-defense training and cardiovascular activity
is the essence of what makes Taekwondo so attractive to so many
different people. But those interested in pursuing the sport should
consider the caveat that it is a contact sport.
Loui, who recently placed third in “sparring” (which
means controlled fighting in martial arts parlance) at the sixth
annual Golden State Taekwondo Championships at Cal Poly Pomona,
concedes that she still has a little trepidation when it comes time
to actually face an opponent.
“It’s still really scary,” Loui said.
“In sparring, you don’t know who your competition is,
or how good they are.”
“Sparring is full-contact knockout in Taekwondo,”
Chambliss said. “But it’s also a very safe sport. We
use safety gear and it’s an Olympic sport, so everything is
at the league level. Everything is controlled and
professional.”
And it’s not just a guy thing.
JONATHAN YOUNG/Daily Bruin
Four of the six UCLA team representatives who competed at the
tournament were women. Gretchen and Lakeisha Gaenato each posted
first-place victories in their respective sparring divisions, while
Loui added a first-place finish in forms (memorized series of fluid
movements consisting of hand strikes and kicks). Rossina Garcia
took second place in forms and third in sparring.
Stephanoff and Chris Martin each placed in the top three in both
kinds of competition and qualified to compete at the U.S. National
Taekwondo Championships later this month, in Michigan.
The age range for collegiate competition is 17 to 27, and
sparring divisions are determined by weight, gender and belt
colors, which designate how much experience a competitor has. Forms
divisions are determined by belt color and gender.
“I’m real excited about our team,” said
Chambliss, who stresses a less traditional, yet more pragmatic form
of Taekwondo to his students. The key differences include more
emphasis on competition and less on meditation. “We have
about half black belts already, and this puts our team in a great
position at the World Collegiate Games in a few months at
Berkeley.”
Chambliss, also the president of Champions Sportsplex, an
athletic training complex, said he will maintain his steadfast
commitment to the UCLA Taekwondo team gaining proper status as a
club sport, and he also said that he is talking with coaches from
other Pac-10 schools to form an alliance and have competitions.
Chambliss pointed to the fact that over 300 major universities
and colleges in the U.S. have Taekwondo programs, including Pac-10
members Stanford, Arizona and Cal, and expressed mild
disappointment that a university of UCLA’s caliber has yet to
establish one. Cal’s program has existed for more than 25
years.
“I’ve been involved with Taekwondo for over 40
years, and I’ve developed a top-5 program at Colorado,”
he said. “We just need the support from the school. Wait
until they see what we can do in competition. I think, eventually,
UCLA teams will finish in the top-5 every year.”
What types of athletes would UCLA recruit?
“It doesn’t really matter what background you
are,” Loui said. “If you have a killer instinct, you
can do this.”