Watching a Papua New Guinean competitor of Tang Soo Do represent his country at a world championships is something I have dreamed of since starting the first local club of the karate-based Korean martial art in Goroka eight years ago. That dream finally came true in early July when I took my 25-year-old student Nicholas Onare to the American city of Greensboro, North Carolina, to compete in the 2024 World Championships of the World Tang Soo Do Association. Arriving at the giant sports stadium, I followed the crowd out of an aisle to find a seat with the best view, the excitement rising as I watched the WTSDA flag brought in, then the host country USA flag, and finally, alphabetically, each flag of the 25 represented countries. As the announcer got to the Ms and called Mexico, I prepared my camera. “Mozambique! Netherlands! Nicaragua!” Scattered applause followed each one. “…Pakistan! Panama!” Then “Papua New Guinea!” Another of my Goroka students, Grace Ward – who is now living back in the US and had come to Greensboro specially to support Nicholas – joined me as we cheered the loudest, trying to clap and hold our phones out to record the young man proudly carrying the PNG flag into the arena and up to the flag display with the other country flags. Only we knew how far he had come to get there, and almost didn’t make it. Here is our story.
School’s secondary campus and turned the back room into a computer room, but they did not kick us out. Instead, they gave us a bigger training space in a cleared classroom. By word of mouth our group grew, and people came from many locations: nearby villages, missionary compounds, school students, people who came to Goroka for work, and more. Goroka’s master level black belt Tang Soo Do instructor Tabby Lutz (right) with red belt student Nicholas Onare, who this year attended the world championships in the United States – the first Papua New Guinean to compete at that level in the Korean martial art
T he Goroka Tang Soo Do Club began in 2016 in the back room of a former restaurant called The Haven that was popular in the Eastern Highlands town. We used empty Coke bottles as kicking targets, hand-drawn flags for protocol
and trained in sweatpants and t-shirts. At those first classes we had about seven children and 10 adults and teenagers, but little by little we grew in numbers and gained gear. The Haven transitioned to Goroka Grammar
At the opening ceremony of the World Tang Soo Do Championships in the US in July, PNG’s Nicholas Onare took his place alongside 1400 competitors from around the world
VOLUME 40 2024
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