Announcements

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the potential for Taekwondo to become an official NCAA Intercollegiate sport. The current discussion is focused on the sport’s viability through the Emerging Sports program which is under the NCAA Committee on Women’s Sports (CWS).
According to the NCAA website, “An emerging sport is a women’s sport recognized by the NCAA that is intended to help schools provide more athletics opportunities for women, more sport sponsorship options for institutions and help that sport achieve NCAA championship status.”

The National Collegiate Taekwondo Association (NCTA) is the official governing body for intercollegiate taekwondo competition and development in the United States. The NCTA has held both individual and team championships for the past 40 years and will host the 41st National Collegiate Taekwondo Championships at the University of Colorado, Boulder on April 23rd-24th 2016.

The process of becoming an NCAA Championship sport is extremely complicated and worthy of careful consideration. With that in mind, the NCTA will be hosting a dedicated meeting at this year’s National Championships to discuss the issue. Working together with USA Taekwondo (The Olympic/National governing body for the sport in the United States), the NCTA is committed to determining the best course of action for the continued development of Collegiate Taekwondo and the dedicated athletes involved.

The University of California Martial Arts Program is pleased to announce that UCMAP Director Dr. Russell Ahn has been appointed as Taekwondo Technical Delegate (TD) of the International University Sports Federation (FISU). He will be serving as the technical chairman for the taekwondo events at the Summer Universiade games, which is a biennial competition between universities worldwide. For the past 10 years, Dr. Ahn has been serving as a special assistant for the FISU TD, Dr. Ken Min. Ahn also previously served as the World Taekwondo Federation (WTF) technical delegate for both the 2011 Shenzhen Summer Universiade and the 2015 Gwangju Summer Universiade.

Dr. Ahn was also reappointed as Vice-Chairman of the Youth and Collegiate committee of the WTF, a role in which he has served in since 2010. He has also served in other leadership positions within the WTF, including as the Collegiate Committee Chairman in 2009. He also currently serves as the president of the US National Collegiate Taekwondo Association and is on the board of directors of USA Taekwondo, the national governing body of taekwondo in the United States. He continues to demonstrate thought leadership in the space, including delivering a keynote speech entitled “Global Leadership Development for Taekwondo” at the 5th Seoul Taekwondo World Leaders Forum, hosted by Kukkiwon, the World Taekwondo Headquarters, in Korea.

This impressive array of responsibilities continues the University of California, Berkeley’s leadership in the international taekwondo world, as the previous Taekwondo TD to FISU, Dr. Ken Min, also hails from the university. In addition to starting UCMAP, Dr. Min also initiated the university taekwondo movement worldwide, hosting both the 1st and 7th World University Taekwondo Championship (WUTC), a FISU-sanctioned event, at UC Berkeley.

FISU hosted the WUTC until taekwondo’s inclusion as an optional event at the Summer Universiade games in 2003. Recently, the FISU executive committee approved taekwondo as a compulsory sport for the Summer Universiade, beginning in 2017 in Taipei. The Summer Universiade only has 11 compulsory sports, but hosts over 60 sports in total. FISU has been engaging universities worldwide to promote sports values and encourage sports practice since 1949.

Recently, Dr. Ahn was promoted to 8th Dan black belt in taekwondo from Kukkiwon.