ST. PETERS—Thirty-six young athletes and eight in the senior to adult group passed their Taekwondo Belt examinations Saturday. Each of the students from the King yen Taekwondo School in St. Peters will now be able to wear the next level belt.
The testing which included gymnastics and flexibility, basic Taekwondo techniques and patterns and the higher belts were also tested on free sparring and breaking technics.
White belt - One yellow stripe
Earning their first promotion to a White belt with one yellow stripe are Jordan Frederick, Chardinae van Heyningen and Dwayne Wilson.
White belt - two yellow stripes
A White belt with two yellow stripes have been awarded to Bengt Acosta-Toss, Jerah Allen, Shanirijo Allen, D’Andre Bryan, Claudio Buncamper Jr; Jordan Frederick, Kaylenn Perez-Fuentes, Kendrys Fuentes, Nikki Holiday, Sunil Mankaran, Henri Seferina and Raj Sooknarine,
Yellow belt
Yellow belts can now be worn by Shalisa Haripersaud, Thashan Khemraj, Jhavid Persaud- Ramcharan, Henri
Seferina, Jayden Tennant and Jada Tennant.
Yellow belt - Green stripe
Adding a green stripe to their yellow belt are Lucas Brouwer, Cherise Heide, Tarique Heide, Shailen James, Hadassah Park, Key-Mari Richardson, Rique Lee Rosalia-Liu and Shon Sooknarine.
Green belt
Three students earned a green belt. Moving up were Charlene Haripersaud, Jacquelle Johnson and Suleyka
Tjon Tam Pau.
Green belt - Blue stripe
Rheysa Tjon Tam Pau earned a blue stripe to put on the green belt.
Blue belt
Kimberley Sabajo will be wearing a blue belt to her next Taekwondo class in the in the Gymnasium of the Helmich Snijiders Hillside Christian School.
Blue belt - Red stripe
Maalik Richardson and Kiara Williams both earned a red stripe to put on their blue belt.
Adults/Seniors
White belt - one yellow stripe
In the older group, earning their first promotion to a white belt with one yellow stripe are Liesel
Acosta-Toss and Danny Acosta. Both also passed the examination for a White belt with two yellow stripes
Yellow belt
Luisa Perez Veras earned a yellow belt while Rodwel Park, Sr. added a green stripe to his yellow belt.
Green belt
Audrey van der Riet and Paulien Vuijst both earned a green belt.
The quarterly exams are conducted in accordance with the rules and regulations of World Taekwondo (WT) and the Kukkiwon under the auspices of the St. Maarten Taekwondo Federation and officially authorized by their recommender Grandmaster Theo Liu.
"Each time the students graduate from one level to the next, it is a positive development for the Taekwondo sport on St. Maarten,” said the grandmaster. He was assisted in the testing by locally trained black belt holders Master Lee-Ann Liu, Julien Fleming, and Shekina Carbon.
“We had quite some students that took an exam for the first time and the results were encouraging” said Liu who frequently takes his students to international tournaments where they achieve great results and take home many gold medals.
