Successful weekend: Liam Summers, Damon Vasterink, Ethan McKay, Sammy Rachele and Katrina Moutafis took out medals at the Taekwondo National Championships at the weekend.
It was a weekend to remember for Shepparton’s Koryo Taekwondo Centre with the dojang cleaning up at the Taekwondo National Championships in Bendigo.
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Taking on the nation’s best, the Shepparton centre took home eight medals, with all five competitors in attendance bringing home silverware.
The event kicked off with youngster Liam Summers competing as a blue belt for the first time at the national event.
Picking up a silver medal in the poomsae, Summers' impressive effort was followed by Ethan McKay securing a silver medal for his efforts fighting, while Katrina Moutafis picked up a bronze in her poomsae division.
Damon Vasterink went one step further in his poomsae event, taking out gold to secure his first national title after 13 years with the dojang.
“That was pretty special for him to finally win a national title,” centre owner Sammy Rachele said.
“He’s pretty happy about that.”
Vasterink’s maiden title was not the only gold brought back to Shepparton, with Rachele taking out one silver and two gold in board breaking and one gold in poomsae.
Happy days: Ethan McKay and Katrina Moutafis show their skills alongside Sammy Rachele, Liam Summers and Damon Vasterink.
Full of praise for his students, Rachele said it was good to see them not only perform at a high level, but learn from it.
“It’s good to finally have reward for all the training that they’ve been doing, because they’ve been going for months now just trying to get ready for it,” he said.
“Training three or four times a week just to be able to compete at the top level and to walk away with a medal in the national championships is pretty special.
“Instead of doing these online events it was pretty good to have over 1000 competitors from all over Australia get together after two years and do it for real.”
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