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Two titles for Tritons

Cortes, Hill crowned

Submitted photo The Iowa Central taekwondo team poses together after the national championships.

Iowa Central crowned two more national champions recently at the 43rd National Collegiate Taekwondo Association championships at American University in Washington DC.

Female red belt heavyweight champion Maria Cortes repeated her feat of two years ago. Male blue belt heavyweight Laurent Hill dominated his division, bringing home a gold medal and the fourth individual national champion for the Tritons in just their third year.

The championships included poomsae and sparring competitions for color belts and black belts. The NCTA Championships are USA Taekwondo-sanctioned events and serve as qualifiers for the 2018 USA Taekwondo National Championships for all competitors.

All competitors will qualify to compete at the 2018 USA Taekwondo National Championships in their corresponding poomsae and/or sparring divisions. Collegiate black belt sparring and poomsae team trial divisions will serve as Team Trials for the 2018 U.S. National Collegiate team.

The competition hosted a record breaking 600 plus athletes. The team had three other medalists in sparring at this year’s national competition.

St. Edmond graduate Colin Birzer took third in men’s red belt. Brooke Waterbury was third in women’s green belt, and Trittany Miller was the same in women’s blue belt.

Other Tritons competing were Faith Gosse, Vieng Keophanya, Keilund Steinborn, Brittany Bendickson, Catie Schoon, Damond Denney, and William Garcia.

The Tritons repeated their top 10 team finish with 124 colleges competing. All divisions compete against each other with no separation of size of the college/univerty.

“I am very proud of our student athletes and the program we have at Iowa Central,” ICCC head coach Justin Faiferlick said. “For us to compete and consistently be in the Top 10 of all colleges is incredible.

“I am very happy for Maria winning her second national collegiate title. Laurent worked hard during the season and off-season to make himself better. Laurent’s goal at the beginning of the season was to be the National champion and he did it. I received feedback from other coaches and referees on how well our atheletes performed and fought with an indomitable spirit.”

Eight of the 12 Tritons are from Iowa.

Faiferlick and assistant William Whitehead lead Iowa Central. Faiferlick is a 6th degree black belt who competed since the 1980s up through this year.

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