Team Cascadia Martial Arts Parksville made their presence felt at the BC Open Taekwondo Tournament, held recently at Canada Place in Vancouver.
The team excelled in both sparring and poomsae (fighting patterns) and brought home a total of 15 medals — six gold, three silvers and and six bronze.
“Once again, I think we established that we’re one of the top taekwondo clubs in the province that regularly put athletes on the podium in both the sparring and poomsae divisions,” said coach and instructor Dustin Fee.
Earning gold medals for Team Casacadia in the sparring competition were Rowan Spitz, Matteo Bennett, Christina Ma, Anthony Fee and Asher Fee. Silver medallists were Lael Kim and Jacob Jacklin while the bronze medallists were Caelyn Corcione, Jared Dudley and Gracie Wallis.
In the poomsae competition, Jack Macleod led the way as he earned gold, with Lily Watts collecting silver and Lael Kim and Augustus Ma each earning a bronze.
Other members who had solid performances in the poomsae event included Ben Zelizney who had to go through a tie-breaker round to finish in fifth place. Brodin Urquhart and Phaedra Wheeler also were fifth-place finishers.
Team Cascadia will next focus on the 2024 Canadian National Junior Taekwondo Championships in Winnipeg starting July 6.
