By Hilary Monaco

ECTC Tournament Committee Member

 

May 3 (New York, NY) - On Sunday, February 28th, ECTC athletes competed at Princeton University for the fourth tournament of the season. This tournament was the largest tournament in league history with 445 competitors from 29 schools. Special thanks to our farthest traveling schools, Virginia Tech and the University of Michigan. Thanks for making the trip!

 

With every new tournament each school starts the day with the poomsae competition. Poomsae continues to get increasingly competitive in the league across all ranks. First place in the black belt division went to Rene Zhao (MIT) and Andrew Hurd (Northeastern University). In the red belt divisions, first place went to Hyunji Kim (Cornell) and  Immanuel Ampomah (Northeastern University). Blue belts gold medalists were Nina Anwar (MIT) and Frank Yuxing Fang (Columbia). First place in green belt forms were awarded to Green belts Jaena Han (Columbia) and Waeya Lin (Elmira College). Finally, our yellow belt gold medalists were Gina Yuan (MIT) and Samuel Majors (MIT). After the poomsae competition, MIT led the tournament with 148 points, Cornell was in second place with 120 points and Northeastern University was in third with 55 points.

 

Sparring competition on Sunday saw approximately 170 matches across all divisions. C-team sparring [white through green belt competitors] was the largest division with more than 70 matches across the men’s and women’s brackets. West Point Women’s C1 (Kelly Redmond, Allie Baker and Sarah Juhn) beat Penn State Women’s C1 (Nicole Laurent, Alexandra Lopez and Sherylee Harley) in the finals to secure the gold and Cornell Men’s C1 (Harrison David Fay, Carlos Wainwright and Curtis Sumner) beat West Point Men’s C1 (Takhyun Cho, Tommy Lor, Bradley Harrison and Nahm-Doug Kim (Alt)) for the gold in the men’s division, fighting through the deepest brackets in their respective women’s and men’s divisions to make it to the finals. B-team [Red-green belt competitors] women’s sparring gold went to Tufts Women’s B1 (Adeline Gall, Maya Saxena, Kira Tomlinson and Caroline Scheck (alt)) who won over MIT Women’s B1 (Yang Dai, Jean Chow and Sam Amey-Gonzalez) in the finals. Men’s B-team gold went to West Point Men’s B1 (William Xu, Ellis Valdez and Eli Eichenberber) after they fought MIT Men’s B1 (Ruben Amaez, Mitchell Hwang and Manuel Guillen (Alt)) in the finals. Finally, Women’s A-team [Black and red belt competitors] gold went to Rutgers Women’s A1 (Meghna Jain, Nathalie Peck and Julia Kong), winning over American University Women’s A1 (Janny Jang and Diane Kim); Men’s A-team gold went to Duke Men’s A1 (Brendan Ryu, Brian Pegno and Eric Mastrolonardo), who fought Penn State Men’s A1 (Joshua Roemer, Joshua Bartlett and Michael Clupper) in the finals.

 

Special note should be taken of the to the two-person teams who made it to finals in Women’s A-team sparring (American University A1) and Men’s B-team sparring (MIT B1), a very difficult feat in Sunday’s strong brackets. Given the three-person-team sparring format in the ECTC, a team must win two of a possible three fights to advance. For these two-person teams to advance over a three man team, they must win both fights. So for these two-person teams to make it to the finals is a significant accomplishment.

 

After a full, efficient day of competition the final tournament standings are as follows: Third place - West Point (248 points), Second place - MIT (272 points), First place - Cornell (336 points).

 

Check out the league standings here!