DLSU Poomsae: The ‘Redeem Team’

After debuting last season, the UAAP will continue to have the sport of Poomsae as an official event in the country’s premiere collegiate league this season.

During their inaugural year last season, the DLSU Poomsae team finished last in a field of five teams, but this year, the team looks to start on the right foot as they engage in another season with their eyes set on no less than gold.

5000 years of history and counting

The martial art that is taekwondo dates back as far as 3000 B.C., but was only formalized in Korea in the 1940s. Gyeorugi, the most popular classification of taekwondo, is a sport where two opponents spar with each other and scoring is based on the number of contacts a player makes with an opponent. This form of taekwondo has been an official Olympic event since the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Poomsae (also known as Pumsae), the lesser-known cousin of Gyeorugi, is just starting to gain popularity all over the world. Poomsae, which is a non-contact sport, concentrates on the gracefulness of the movements that a practitioner makes. Traditionally performed with a weapon, the practitioner performs a set of choreographed or pre-planned taekwondo moves to impress the judges.

It was last season when the UAAP added the highly anticipated Poomsae to its list of official sporting events. The teams performed a series of routines in which they were judged based on different categories. The event had five participating schools, namely, UST,UP, ADMU,DLSU, and FEU. The Poomsae event was held simultaneously with the Gyeorugi matches.

Trial by fire

Still in its developmental stage, the Poomsae team now has one season of experience under their belt. The athletes are now determined to adjust accordingly to improve their performance this season. “Since UAAP has only launched Poomsae as an official game last year, everything was still new. Every experience made an impact on me. I think the most important lesson I have learned was that you cannot just give up. You must keep your goal in your heart and in your mind and make it a reality,” Poomsae team member Cheska Erfe-Mejia shares.

When asked about the changes they have made since the previous tournament, Poomsae Captain Jaka Andal says, “For this season, trainings just got more serious since we have more time to prepare as compared to last season. Other than mastering all Poomsae forms, we also focus on our strength and conditioning which helps improve how we perform.”

The team trains every weekday in preparation for the tournament this September. With this, the team hopes to improve the team chemistry along the way. “For now our team chemistry is okay, but we’re still working very hard to make it better. In order to do so, sometimes we extend training time and sometimes we have some extra practice with or without the supervision of our coach,” Andal adds.

In the center of all this is the team captain Andal who is tasked to lead the team. La Salle’s captain plans to be a leader by example among his teammates, helping them both in the sport of Taekwondo and as a person. “I’m actually a man of few words so being team captain is somewhat a big change for me since I have to speak out more but I tend to be more of a person who leads by example,” the team captain expounds.

With a year added to their experience and with the months spent in their preparation for this season tucked under their belts, the DLSU Poomsae team plans to impress everyone this season. Expect the DLSU Taekwondo-Poomsae team to leave it all on the mat as they try to redeem themselves this coming September in this season’s edition of UAAP Poomsae.