As most Brown students packed their bags and headed home for spring break, more than 400 taekwondo competitors from colleges across the nation converged on campus last weekend for the 34th National Collegiate Championship, the first-ever taekwondo tournament hosted at Brown.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology took first place in overall points at the championship, which included two-person sparring and single-person competitions in choreographed form sequences called poomsae. Brown won the division for novices or color belts (as distinct from black belts) and placed second overall.
Sixty-five athletes from Brown competed this year, the most any school has sent to a national championship, said Angela Yang '09, a former president of Brown taekwondo.
Planning for the tournament began last April after Brown was told at the 2008 nationals at Stanford University that it would host this year's championship, said Michelle Ramadan '10, the club's current president.
The Brown-hosted competition was distinguished from past years' contests by the extensive use of a tournament Web site in the weeks leading up the event. The site was updated continuously by Web master Paul Jeng '10 with competitor and volunteer registration information, the event schedule and items competitors should bring, Ramadan said.
Rex Hatfield, President of the National Collegiate Taekwondo Association, called the tournament the "first fully online championship."
"I think the online aspect of it helped take away a lot of the face-to-face problem-solving we've had to do in the past," he said.
The tournament - which was also a qualifier for the Pan American Collegiate Taekwondo Championships Sparring Team - took place on Saturday and Sunday, March 21 and 22. Competitors clad in white uniforms crowded the floor of Pizzitola to practice the staccato transitions between stances before the first day's poomsae contests.
The tournament was divided between poomsae competition on the first day and sparring on the second.
Spectators, including teammates and parents of the athletes, watched the competition from the stands, which were roped off from the six mats in the arena.
David Huie, a senior at Princeton University who attended with thirteen of his teammates, said the tournament was running efficiently and on-schedule. Limited seating at Pizzitola meant that athletes had to wait outside the arena, in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center's holding area, to be called to their matches, and some competitors said the viewing area was often crowded.
Ramadan said spectators were not allowed closer to the rings so stretchers could get to injured participants faster, if necessary. The extra space also allowed for smoother transitions between matches, she added.
"We worked with what we had," Yang said of the space limitations at Pizzitola.
Preparing to host
Around eighty-five volunteers, mostly members of Brown taekwondo, staffed the event. Many only competed in poomsae, then helped with logistics during the sparring portion of the tournament.
Volunteers also served as ring-runners, responsible for ferrying athletes between matches. Volunteer ringside scorers watched spars, recording points and keeping time with specialized software that displayed match information on computer monitors adjacent to each ring.
The tournament cost more than $30,000, according to Ramadan, with much of the cost going toward overnight accommodations for tournament referees, use of the Erickson Athletic Complex, catering and equipment.
Yang, who was club president last year when Brown received its bid to host nationals, said that Brown's status as one of the consistently high-ranking taekwondo colleges in the country made it a natural candidate to host the tournament.
"We felt it was time, and that our club had the energy and manpower to do it," she said.
Undertaking nationals as its first tournament to host was nevertheless unusual, Ramadan said. Stanford and MIT both had experience hosting other tournaments before they received bids to plan nationals, she added.
Much of the preparation for the tournament involved negotiating with campus offices and private businesses for lower prices on tournament supplies, Ramadan said.
Competitors were charged an entrance fee for the event, which helped to recoup costs, Ramadan said. The club received monetary support from campus offices, including the Office of the Dean of the College and the Division of Campus Life and Student Services. Two Brown students competed at the tournament free of charge with funding from the Third World Center and the Sarah Doyle Women's Center.
Yang said the tournament planners relied heavily on the guidance of the Brown Taekwondo Instructor Board - Brown black-belts who coach other club members - and the club Master, Sung Park '96.
